Spell Song: An Enchanting Urban Fantasy

by J. F. Forrest

  Sami walked over to the window looking over State Street. Sure enough, down below, rumbling on the side of the street, was Ricky’s gigantic black Ford F-150 dually. He waved out of the window and honked his horn.

  “You see me?”

  She sighed. “Yeah. I see you.”

  Her phone buzzed in her ear. She looked at the screen.

  “Ricky, give me a few minutes, my mom is calling. I’ll be down in fifteen, okay?”

  “Sounds good, sugar.”

  She clicked over to the other call.

  “Hey Mom, what’s up?”

  “Hun, it’s RayRay.” Mary Proctor’s voice was frantic. “They’ve got RayRay!”

  “What? Who’s got RayRay?” Sami demanded.

  “The men that came when you were here. The dark sunglasses guys with guns. They came back. Well, Agent Cross came back sooner than the other and he’s been very nice. But the second guy, Agent Seville, came back and took RayRay. We tried to stop him, but…he has magic.”

  Sami knew immediately who they were talking about.

  “Mom, you sit tight. I’m on my way.” She glanced in the kitchen at Mikki still rummaging around in the pantry. “I’ll be there as fast as I can.”

  “Wait, hun, hold on.” Mary interrupted her. “Agent Cross wants to speak to you.”

  “He’s still there?”

  “Yes, he’s here. He wants to help. Here he is.”

  The sound of her handing the phone to the man rustled in Sami’s ears. Then he came on.

  “Samantha, I know you don’t know me, but your brother is in grave danger.”

  “I know. I’m coming there to help.”

  “No, don’t come here. They’re already long gone. Left about three hours ago. He’ll be bringing RayRay out to the lab. It’s actually pretty close to Knoxville where you live.”

  “Haw Ridge Park?”

  There was a stunned silence on the line.

  “How the hell did you know that?”

  “I have my ways.”

  “Look,” Agent Cross started, “do not go out there. I work for…actually…I guess I used to work for a woman named Elke Anderson. She’d be the one holding your brother and she’s extremely dangerous.”

  Sami looked down at her arm hanging by her side. It blazed to life with bright orange and yellow symbols.

  “Not as dangerous as I am.”

  She hung up before he could say anything else.

  Patrick and Joe watched as the big black truck pulled away carrying the four people they had been watching at the coffee shop. It was the young black girl who had been using the magic and her friends, the redneck, the jock, and the old lady. Joe had his phone to his ear.

  “Yeah. We just saw them head out a few seconds ago.”

  Patrick listened as his partner spoke. He watched Joe’s mouth drop open with excitement.

  “You want us to come into the office?”

  More talking on the other end of the call. Joe flashed a thumbs-up to Patrick.

  “We need to debrief before we go on the mission?”

  Patrick nodded and rubbed his hands together to spray the sprinkles from the donut he’d finished.

  “Stop that!” Joe said to Patrick, “Oh no, not you, ma’am. I was speaking to my partner. We’ll be right there. Is there a password or secret handshake we should use when we knock?”

  Joe listened with intensity as he received the final instructions.

  “Yes ma’am, we’re on our way.”

  He started the car and jerked it into gear. They squealed away from the curb and Joe realized they were still dressed in their stinky homeless gear.

  “We need to change. You got any extra clothes in here?”

  Patrick rummaged around in the back seat. He pulled a crumpled mass of brightly colored pants up front. The wild designs on the pants landed somewhere between Randy “The Macho Man” Savage and David Lee Roth. Patrick held them up to his nose and sniffed.

  “Not too bad,” he shrugged.

  “It’ll have to do,” Joe said. “I’m not going in there with these filthy rags on. You change now and I’ll change when we get there.”

  Patrick tugged his torn, stained sweats off and pulled the wild pants on.

  “Should’ve planned for this,” Joe mumbled as he turned their car onto Gay Street.

  Minutes later, they were standing under the massive five thousand seven hundred white LED bulb marquee of the historic Tennessee Theater. The vintage style ticket booth was a large pane of green tinted glass with a small round hole cut in the middle. A high-pitched voice crackled through the speaker set in the hole when they approached.

  “May I help you?” the voice asked.

  “Two tickets to the midnight showing of The Wizard of Oz, please,” Joe made a ridiculous show of winking at the kid in the booth.

  Of course, there was no midnight showing of the classic film. This was a secret code phrase to permit access to the private basement offices that most people had no idea were under the theater. Two gold foil tickets that reminded Patrick of the Willy Wonka tickets slid under the glass.

  “Enjoy the show,” the speaker squawked.

  Joe handed Patrick one of the tickets and they hurried inside. Another teenage kid stood at a maroon velvet rope. He looked at their golden tickets and ushered them inside.

  “The elevator to the left will take you to your show. Please be sure to check out the concession stand for a complete selection of the finest refreshments including beer, wine, and liquor. We hope you enjoy your Tennessee Theater experience.”

  Joe and Patrick scurried to the elevator like kids who were first in line for the rides at Disney World. As the door slid closed behind them, Patrick raised his hand to push a button and then realized…there were no buttons. The elevator ignored this fact and began to shimmy and shake as it lowered them into the basement. Joe clapped his hands together and rubbed the back and forth with glee.

  “This is it, Pat. Our first face-to-face report to the KPDA. When the White Cloaks hear about this, they’ll accept us as junior informants or deputies or whatever they call them for sure.”

  “Yup.” Patrick agreed and then after a moment asked, “Joe, what’s the KPDA?”

  “You’re kidding, right? After all this time and effort you don’t know what the Knoxville Paranormal Defense Agen—”

  The elevator lurched to a quick stop and interrupted his thought. Joe pushed the brass metal accordion gate to the side and stepped into the dark room. A tall, thin man with long white hair and a silvery beard walked up to them. He wore a floor length gray robe. Holy moly, thought Joe with glee. Not only is this guy a wizard, it’s freakin’ Gandalf.

  Joe extended a hand to shake and the wizard wrapped both of his bony hands around it. He smiled kindly.

  “A pleasure to meet you, Joe, is it?”

  “Yes, sir,” Joe made an awkward half-curtsy, half-bow gesture. “The pleasure is all ours.”

  “I see you have worn what must be your customary tribal uniforms.” The wizard looked down at their outrageous pants.

  “Our tribal what?” Joe realized he meant the crazy pants. “Oh, yes, of course.”

  Patrick stood straight upright with a goofy smile on his face until Joe elbowed him in the ribs. Then he copied Joe’s odd bow as well.

  “No need for such formalities, gentlemen.” The wizard waved his hand. “Come along. We all want to hear what you know. Your help will be invaluable in keeping watch over the use of magic on Earth. It’s a tough business, you know?”

  As they walked down the hall, Joe delighted in the plush maroon and gold fleur-de-lis carpet under his feet and realized that there was a small, circular sphere of amber light that followed them as they walked. Beyond that light, he could see nothing.

  “Ah, here we are.” The wizard pulled a wand from his sleeve as a door came into view in front of them.

  Joe strained to hear what the wizard said as he twirled the wand in a tight circle over the ornate do
or knob. Sounded like he might’ve said open sesame…but that couldn’t be right. When they walked in, the wizard flipped a light switch and the bright blue glare of a fluorescent light shocked Joe for a second. When his eyes adjusted he was, in a word, underwhelmed. Inside was an office with a steel desk, a brown leather rolling chair, a vintage phone with three flashing squares on it, a small computer monitor on the desk with a keyboard in front of it, and two mismatched steel filing cabinets. To his left, Joe saw an old Xerox copy machine whirring away printing sheet after sheet of gibberish. On the edge of the desk was a wooden name plate that read, Orin Nightmander.

  Orin punched a button on the phone.

  “Jan, could you come on in and bring the stenograph please?”

  “Be right there,” a voice warbled back.

  “Can I get you boys anything? Bottled water? Coke? Popcorn?”

  Patrick chimed in. “A large coke and a bucket of popcorn would be gre—”

  He couldn’t finish his sentence before Joe elbowed him in the ribs.

  “Actually, Mr. um…Nightmander…we’re fine, thank you.”

  “Call me Orin. Please.” He smiled as the door opened.

  A tall woman with short, fluffy white hair and watery blue eyes walked in bent over a wheeled cart with an ancient typing machine on it that reminded Patrick of the old Perry Mason show. She smiled at them and rolled around to sit beside Orin. Winding a roll of white paper into the machine, she sat and waited for the questioning to begin.

  “Okay, gentlemen.” Orin steepled his hands under his chin. “Shall we start at the beginning? Let’s talk about the incident at the Sunsphere.”

  Joe and Patrick began telling the story of seeing Sami use her magic to deflect the falling glass to protect the children. In the next room, two women watched on a closed circuit monitor. One of the women clicked the keys on her computer as they talked. Lines of green code ran up and down the screen.

  “Mmhmm,” the woman typing said. “See that, Margot? They’re right. There was a pretty big spike of magic that day.”

  “I see it, Linda, I see it.”

  Margot clicked a few more keys.

  “There was another big surge a day later out in the middle of nowhere near Cookeville. Wonder what the heck she was doing out there?”

  “Who knows?” Linda shook her head. “But the girl is getting pretty cavalier with magic of that caliber.”

  “Mmhmm.”

  Margot gasped when she saw the next few lines crisscross her monitor.

  “Moons of Azuria.” she put her hand to her mouth. “Look at this. I’ve never seen anything like this one.”

  Linda looked over her shoulder at the green code zooming up and down the screen.

  “Did she somehow stop time?”

  “Not exactly. Looks like she…fast-forwarded past it somehow.”

  “How on Earth did she do that? I mean in Azuria, maybe, but here on Earth—”

  “I don’t know, but I do know that I’m calling it in to Upstairs.”

  Upstairs was not literally upstairs in the theater, but it was a reference to the main White Cloaks outpost on Earth. It was in a secret location in Boston. Linda nodded and crossed her arms as Margot picked up a nearby phone.

  “Hold on!” Linda jerked her finger up at the monitor, “What is that?”

  “Another spike. A big one.”

  “Where is it?”

  “It’s out at the Haw Ridge Park in Oak Ridge.”

  “But there’s nothing out there…right?”

  “There’s a Caulla out there, but no one knows much about it. It’s in a protected State Park, so there’s no way for Azurians to settle there.”

  “Get the White Cloaks on the line,” Linda pointed at the phone, “something big is going on around here.”

  Margot dialed the number again and waited.

  “Okay, gentlemen.” Orin leaned back in his chair. “I think we have everything we need. It sure is helpful to have such concerned citizens as yourselves, helping us out.”

  “Is this when we get to be junior deputies?” Patrick blurted out.

  The white haired woman named Jan who had been tapping out the details of their story on the stenograph covered her mouth as she stifled a laugh. Joe smacked the back of Patrick’s head.

  “Oh, um—” Orin furrowed his eyebrows at Jan. “Yes, of course. Jan, would you be so kind as to uh, swear these two fine gentlemen into the um…the deputy program please?”

  Jan opened her mouth to ask what in the world Orin was talking about, but he spoke quickly.

  “You know,” he nodded, “the Dediscio program.”

  “Ahhh,” Jan smiled. “Of course. Gentlemen, if you’ll follow me, we’ll get you sworn in.”

  They followed her into an adjoining office that was as underwhelming as Orin’s and she had them sit in two folding chairs. She opened a desk drawer and produced a thin, wooden wand.

  “Okay, let’s get started. Repeat after me. Dediscio.”

  As she spoke, she waved the wand first over Joe and then over Patrick. She formed a picture in her mind of all the details they had reported to Orin and began to cloud them from their mind. She couldn’t exactly erase the details, but she could push them to a place behind another memory that was hardly accessed and in effect, bury it. An Obliviscatur spell would erase the last fifteen minutes or so, but she needed a more comprehensive solution for these guys. Dediscio would be more effective—somewhat like boxing up old belongings in an attic, or in this case, a basement.

  She completed the spell and walked them up a spiral staircase that led to the back of one of the dark, empty theaters. Joe and Patrick would leave convinced that they had seen the movie and loved every minute of it. And not until years later would the memory of the magic they had witnessed resurface and their grandkids would think that dementia was settling in.

  Orin popped his head into the office where Margot and Linda were sitting.

  “What have you got for me?”

  “The White Cloaks are en route to Haw Ridge Park. There’s something big going on out there and Sami is at the center of it.”

  “And the artifact?”

  Margot and Linda shared a glance at each other.

  “If it’s out there, we can’t see it.”

  Orin whistled through his teeth. “This is big. I’m going out there. Call me if anything changes.”

  19

  Beyond The Limit

  Sami, Ricky, Scott, and Doris all sat in the idling pickup truck a few hundred feet down the trail from the silo Ricky had picked out on the satellite image of Haw Ridge Park. Even from this distance, they could see the massive wall topped with razor wire standing between them and their destination.

  “How come this didn’t show up on Google?” Sami asked.

  “Probably an old image,” Scott replied.

  “Quiet, all of you,” Ricky quoted Jurassic Park, “they’re approaching the Tyrannosaur paddock.”

  “Not funny, Ricky,” Sami punched his shoulder.

  “That place is locked up tighter than a bull’s butt at fly time,” Scott murmured.

  “Really, Scott?” Sami punched him too. “You guys are not helping. How the hell are we going to get in there?”

  “I say we ram this truck down their throats,” Ricky sniffed. “This old girl will smash right through that little gate they got there.”

  “Not likely, dearie,” Doris chimed in. “Looks like reinforced concrete to me. I’m betting you’ll smash into it and kill us all if you try it.”

  “Thanks a lot, Doris-downer,” Ricky huffed.

  “I’m with Doris on this one,” Sami agreed. “Not likely they’d make a gate like that without considering a rogue pickup truck.”

  Scott opened his door. Ricky followed suit.

  “Where the hell are you guys going?” Sami asked.

  “Gonna do a little prowlin’ around.” Ricky nodded from one side of the door to the other. “See what’s round the rest of this wall.”r />
  “You go left, Scott. I’ll go right.”

  “Roger that.”

  Within a few seconds, both of them had disappeared in the dense trees to the sides of the doorway.

  “What are we gonna do, Doris? They’ve got my brother in there doing who knows what to him.”

  “I’m sure the boys will find a way in, dear. And I wouldn’t worry about your brother. He’s got power too, you know?”

  “True. But it’s different. I seem to have a talent for spells and his magic seems intertwined more with artifacts and relics.”

  “I wouldn’t worry,” Doris tried to reassure her.

  Sami reached down and opened her door, “I’m going to stretch my legs a bit, Doris. Will you keep an eye on Mikki? She’ll probably just sleep in my backpack.”

  “Alright, dear. I can do that.”

  Sami hadn’t walked more than twenty feet toward the gate when she heard a car coming down the road behind them. From the sound of the revving engine, it was going fast…very fast.

  And then, it rounded the bend. It was barreling straight at her and showed no sign of slowing or dodging her. She recognized the black Suburban immediately. It was the same one that had chased her into Hidden Hollow. The driver was the man in the formerly broken sunglasses and the passenger—her heart screamed—it was RayRay.

  Her hands came up and the glowing sigils flared up and down her arms. She dove out of the way as the truck spewed gravel and rock as it careened down the dirt road. Rolling to a stop, she pointed her hands at the back of the truck. But what could she do that wouldn’t hurt her brother?

  In her mind, she formed a picture of a rope…a lasso…a whip…anything and flung it hard at the bumper of the truck. It wasn’t a spell she could put an exact phrase to, but the image was strong. She felt her arms jerk taut as the flash left her hands and she flew forward skidding down the road, sliding and scraping along behind the SUV. She felt her elbows grind along on the dirt and could feel blood begin trickling down her forearms. She had no choice but to let go.

  The truck’s brake lights lit up and it only slowed a little as the massive door swung open to let it pass through. Sami jumped up and began to run as fast as she could, still holding the magic in her hands. Then suddenly, she felt as if she was running in a swimming pool. Her legs strained against the invisible pressure. As she got closer, it grew stronger…and darker.