Joss the Seven

by J. Philip Horne

  Chapter 2 of The Lodestone

  Drakin

  Jack hit the ground a few feet from the precipice, and his water bottle flew out of his hand and disappeared over the edge. His mind was racing. It was just too many weird things in one day to be unrelated. He looked at Sally and realized she was struggling to find her voice so she could let loose with a scream. He rolled over and sat up next to her, covering her mouth with his hand putting a finger to his lips with the other.

  “Shhhhh,” he whispered. “Keep your mouth shut. Something’s going on. Something bad.”

  “What was that?” she whispered fiercely. “Did you do it?”

  “What? Of course not. Now be quiet and follow me.”

  Jack didn’t wait for her to argue. He started crawling forward so he could see down the back side of the hill, and a moment later he heard Sally following him. As they got out from underneath the tree, the ground started tilting down ever steeper, and Jack saw motion up ahead. He flattened himself on the ground and Marine-crawled until he could see down the hill, but nothing made any sense. He rubbed his eyes and looked again. Sally scooted up next to him and let out a gasp, confirming he wasn’t seeing things.

  Two men were headed down the hill, surrounded by a shadowy group of large something. At the center was a tall man in blood-red robes. Beside him was an even larger man wearing only a kilt and boots, covered in medieval weapons held to his body by all sorts of leather straps and cords and sheathes. The things around them, the animals, made no sense. Jack blinked hard and tried to get a better look as the group reached the bottom of the hill and were swallowed by shadows in the failing light, but the group quickly disappeared behind a thicket of trees.

  “Jack,” Sally said, “I’m scared.”

  “About time. I’ve been scared all day.”

  “I thought they were apes, or, I don’t know, maybe gorillas since they were so big. But did you see that one that looked back this way? That was no gorilla.”

  “I know. Sally, we need to move,” Jack said. “Stay close, okay?”

  Sally didn’t look okay. It was hard to tell in the gathering dark, but she looked like she was about to throw up. “Sally, come on. This isn’t one of your books. Let’s get going.”

  Sally clenched her jaw and gave a quick nod. Jack stood and set off at a run down the hill.

  Miss Edna offered a confident, strong security that Jack had never experienced before meeting her four years ago, and he desperately hoped she would be home when they got there. At the bottom of the hill, he angled more east than north to intercept the path by the stream. He kept a hard pace, running and weaving through the scrub, until they came to the crease in the land that held the stream.

  They hit the path as it approached full dark. Jack pulled the flashlight out of his back pocket and tried to aim it down the path as he increased their pace. A minute later the first winking lights of the neighborhood on the edge of Hillacre came into view. They reached the back of Miss Edna’s house a few minutes later. Jack stopped to see if Sally wanted to go on to her house, but she ran right by him and up to the back door. Jack sprinted after her, and they crashed through the door at the same time. Just as he locked the door, they heard the front door open, and Sally let out a little squeal.

  “Jack? Who’s with you?” Miss Edna called from the front room.

  “Miss Edna,” Jack called as relief swept through him, “It’s Sally. Ma’am, can we talk? Everything’s all wrong.”

  “We saw monsters!” Sally said, as Miss Edna stepped into the room, surrounded by cats weaving around her feet. She was a tall, strong woman who wore her blue medical scrubs with real dignity. Her straight brown hair was in a long ponytail, and her face, which somehow looked both old and ageless, was creased with concern.

  “Jack, Sally,” Miss Edna said, “sit down at the table. I need some information, and it’ll help if I get it quickly. Where were you and what did you see?” She immediately held up a hand to stop them as Jack and Sally sat and both started to speak. “Sally, let’s hear it from you first.”

  “We were up on the hill. Well, not together. I was reading, and then Jack showed up, and then there was an explosion. Not like, you know, a bomb in a movie. More like, oh, lightning. Lightning, right there on the hill, without a cloud in the sky. And no actual flash of light. So maybe more a thunderclap.”

  “Okay, Sally, thank you,” Miss Edna said. “Stay calm, dear. Jack, do you agree? A thunderclap, but no lightning?”

  “Yes ma’am,” Jack said.

  Miss Edna’s brow furrowed, and Jack thought she looked scared. He’d never seen her scared before, so he wasn’t sure, but it looked like fear on her face.

  “What next, Sally?”

  “We crept forward,” Sally said, “and saw two men surrounded by, oh, it was awful, Miss Edna! They looked like gorillas, but they had heads like a wolf or something.”

  Miss Edna sat down hard in one of the chairs. “Which way were they headed, Sally?”

  “Toward town,” Sally said. “I think it was toward town.”

  “There’s more, Miss Edna,” Jack said, unable to contain himself any longer. “I’ve been scared all day. Something was creeping me out this morning, and then when I got home after school, it was quiet for a while. No birds, no nothing. And Roscoe is missing.”

  Miss Edna’s face fell into sadness. “Roscoe isn’t missing, my dear Jack. He’s dead. I can feel it in my bones. But we’ll have to mourn him another time. Now listen carefully, you two. Sally, your parents are away, correct?” Sally nodded. “Serena is watching you for the next few days?” Sally nodded again. “All right, I’m going to call Serena and lie to her, you understand? For her safety, I need to make sure she doesn’t wander around looking for you, but I don’t want to risk sending you home just yet, okay. So I’m going to deliberately lie to her for her own safety and yours. Understood? You must stay here, and Serena must not come looking for you.”

  With that, Miss Edna stood and lifted the phone from the kitchen counter. As she dialed, she walked to the front living room. Jack strained to hear her words, but only heard a snatch or two about Sally being sick and falling asleep at Miss Edna’s house.

  “Jack, I’m scared,” Sally said for the second time that evening. A tear tipped out of her left eye and fell to the kitchen table. Jack felt his own throat constricted with fear, but hated to see her cry. It made everything awkward. He reached out and smeared the tear across the table.

  “All right, children,” Miss Edna said as she stepped back into the kitchen, “to action. Both of you hustle through the bathroom, then start pulling any non-perishable food out of cabinets and arrange it on the counter for me. Don’t forget bottled water. Understood?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Jack and Sally said at the same time. She nodded to them and swept out of the room toward her bedroom. Miss Edna no longer carried herself like a strong, maybe a little weird, cat-loving foster mom. To Jack, she had the bearing of a queen. Jack and Sally glanced at each other, and they both shrugged.

  While Sally ran to the bathroom, Jack started pulling various snacks and canned goods out of the pantry and cabinets. When Sally got back, he ran to the bathroom. He found Sally still rummaging through every drawer and shelf when he returned to the kitchen. Suddenly, Miss Edna was back, and Jack dropped the can of beans he was holding when he saw her. She was wearing a deep green robe, with the only ornamentation a silver cross on a heavy chain around her neck. Her hair fell down over her shoulders, freed from the ponytail. In her left hand she held a magnificent staff of dark, gnarled, polished wood, and in her right hand was a shotgun.

  Sally chose that moment to faint. As she fell, Peppers shot out from the cats around Miss Edna and put herself directly under Sally’s head as she hit the floor. Miss Edna nodded to Peppers, and the cat lay still, providing a pillow for Sally as she fluttered her eyes and started to wake up.

  “Jack, she’s fine,” Miss Edna said. “Go get the little duffle bag out of my room t
hat I packed. You’ll find two more empty ones with it. Put my duffle in the living room; bring me one of the empty ones so I can pack food, then stuff as much of your clothing in another one as you can. I fear Sally will have to make do with your clothes for the time being.”

  “Where are we going, Miss Edna?” Jack said.

  “We not going anywhere yet,” Miss Edna replied. “We are preparing for contingencies.”

  “What’s a contingency?”

  “It’s a plan you put in place in case something goes wrong.”

  “Is the shotgun a contingency?” Jack asked.

  “It’s a 10-gauge Mossberg with a gas autoloader and a pistol grip, loaded with an extended magazine of rather special rounds that I put together myself. Now, the duffle bags, Jack.”

  With that, Miss Edna turned to help Sally to her feet, and Jack ran to get the duffle bags. After dropping her duffle bag in the living room, he ran to the kitchen with an empty duffle and found Miss Edna quickly sorting through the food while Sally sat at the kitchen table watching her with eyes wide open. Jack handed off the duffle and ran to his room. He stuffed handfuls of clothes and a few other items into the last duffle bag. On an instinct, he jammed his baseball bat into it, the handle sticking out once he’d zipped it up. After a last look around his room, Jack carried the duffle bag out to the living room.

  Sally was on the couch watching Miss Edna, who was sitting on the floor surrounded by cats. It looked like she was whispering to them, and after a moment she sat up and clapped once. Immediately all eight cats ran to the kitchen and out the cat door in the bottom of the back door. Jack decided either he was going crazy, or Miss Edna was something more than an imposing older woman who had a knack for healing people at the county hospital.

  “Now, children,” Miss Edna said as she rose to her feet, “I need to explain a few things to you.” She strode to the coffee table and took the staff and shotgun, then turned to face them on the couch. “You’ve figured out that not all is well, yes? Here’s what I know.”

  Her voice trailed off as she cocked her head to the side, as though listening. She gasped, turned to the front door, and swung the shotgun up to her shoulder with one hand. With the other hand she held the staff crosswise across her body and rested the shotgun on it. The moment stretched, and Jack grabbed his duffle bag on the floor and yanked the baseball bat out of it.

  “Jack,” Sally whispered, “what are you doing?”

  “Miss Edna thinks she needs a shotgun. Baseball bat’s the best I can do.”

  “But—”

  Sally was cut off when the front door exploded inward and spun across the living room toward Miss Edna, who thrust out her staff and yelled something unintelligible. The door rebounded off the air in front of the staff and ricocheted up and over her, smashing into the wall to the right of the kitchen doorway. There was a pause, a tremendous roar, and one of the ape-wolves charged into the room. It stood, beating its chest and howling at the entryway.

  The creature stood as tall as the doorway on bear-like paws. Its body was covered in matted dark brown fur, and its head looked like a cross between a wolf and a crocodile. It was a nightmare, and it looked straight at Jack as it howled.

  Miss Edna’s shotgun roared to life with sound and fire and the beast was thrown violently back out of the house with a gaping, bloody hole in its chest. Jack had once seen a classmate fire a 12-gauge shotgun and get knocked flat on his back. Miss Edna rocked back on her heels, but stood strong and fired two more rounds through the door in quick succession, stepping from side to side to change her firing angle.

  Jack felt a terror that made his knees jelly and his bladder weak. He glanced at Sally. She was curled up on the couch with her eyes closed and her hands over her ears. He had to do something. To help Miss Edna. The thought drove the fear back enough for him to move. Jack stood and tried to leap across the coffee table to stand by her, but his legs buckled as he jumped. His shins hit the table and he tumbled to the floor just behind her, facing back toward the kitchen. Three of the beasts were creeping toward him, the back door standing open.

  “Miss Edna!” Jack yelled, “The kitchen!”

  The shotgun roared again as he spoke, burying his words. Jack stood up on wobbly legs, his shins screaming in pain. Cats suddenly flooded through the back door, making horrible, screechy cat noises, and Miss Edna’s staff swept Jack to the side as she rotated around and fired once, twice, three times. She completed the turn and faced the front door once more. Jack had the good sense to stay down and keep below the staff the second time, and moved off to the side to keep an eye on both doors. The cats swarmed around Miss Edna and stayed in constant motion, swirling around her feet.

  The man in the blood-red robes stepped imperiously through the door, a staff held in both hands across his body at an angle. He had an ageless, cruel face. Without hesitation, Miss Edna fired the shotgun, and a huge spark of energy exploded directly in front of him, but he was untouched. Jack was stunned. The man stepped forward another pace, and the other man from the hill ducked in through the doorway, a short, curved sword in each hand.

  Miss Edna tossed the shotgun to the side and grasped her staff in a similar manner to the robed man. Jack hadn’t thought things could get worse after the ape-wolves, but he didn’t like seeing the shotgun judged inadequate.

  “Miss Edna,” Jack said in a low voice, “what do we do?”

  “Miss Edna?” the robed man said. He stared intently at her, and then rocked back in surprise. “Edalwin? At the end of my search for the boy, I find you as well?”

  “You found me, Drakin,” Miss Edna said. “And I suppose it’s no surprise to learn you’re behind what was done to the boy.”

  —————

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  About the Author

  J. Philip Horne lives in Dallas, Texas with his wife, four kids, two dogs, two rabbits, and several literary aspirations.

  Novels by Mr. Horne:

  The Lodestone (2011)

  Joss the Seven (2016)

  For news of upcoming works, please join Mr. Horne’s email list at

  http://www.jphiliphorne.com