Demi Mondaine: Volume One

by N. R. Mayfield

  “They don’t let us use names,” Bailey said. “I’d almost forgotten it until just now.”

  “Who is they?” Demi asked.

  “The sisters,” Bailey said. “They run the lodge at the top of the mountain.”

  “What did they do to everyone?” Owen asked. “What are they?”

  “I don’t know,” Bailey said. “I don’t even know if they’re real or just in my head. I can still see them when I close my eyes, I can hear the ticking.”

  “Ticking?” Demi asked, her hand suddenly rising to her temple. “Crap.”

  “You hear it too!” Bailey said. “We have to go! The longer we stay, the deeper they’ll crawl into your mind.”

  “Hold up,” Demi said, shaking her head clear. The ringing let up, for the moment. “We’re not leaving without Doug. What do you think?” she asked the old hunter. “What are we dealing with here?”

  “Maybe a witch?” Owen said with a shrug. “I’ve heard of them using mind control, but not on this scale. What can you tell us about these sisters?” he asked Bailey.

  “They’re young,” Bailey said. “Beautiful. Their eyes—gray and glowing like the moon. Once you stare into them, you can’t look away. You forget everything you ever knew, even your own name. You only know what they want you to know, feel what they want you to feel. It’s… wonderful and terrible all at the same time.”

  “You sound like you want to go back in,” Demi said, narrowing her eyes.

  “Part of me does,” Bailey said. “It’s like the sweetest drug you’ve ever tried. All you know is peace and warmth and their gray eyes. It’s bliss. But it’s also terrifying. You’re helpless, completely at their mercy. But now that I’m free, it’s like there’s a piece missing inside.”

  “Sounds like they dug their way in and carved themselves a nest,” Owen said. “Let’s just pray they didn’t lay any eggs.”

  “You… you don’t mean that literally… do you?” Bailey asked, and Demi flicked off the stove, confident now that the blonde didn’t pose any threat to them, as long as she didn’t slip back into her hypnosis.

  “Who knows?” Demi said. “We have no clue what we’re dealing with.”

  “What do we do?” Bailey asked. “How do we stop this?”

  “The only way I know how,” Demi said. “I’m gonna shoot someone.”

  ***

  “You okay?” Demi asked Bailey. The three of them knelt low to the ground, taking shelter in the dense scrubs that covered the mountainside.

  “No,” Bailey said, her eyes wide and lost. “I can hear them calling out to me with every step I take.”

  “Yeah,” Demi said. “Me too.” The ticking in her head had only grown louder the higher they went up the mountain, and it showed no sign of letting up. Every blink took her to the surreal black landscape where the sisters waited. Their specters had taken on a more definite form, and the glowing gray eyes Bailey had warned her about started to watch her from the darkness.

  “What about you?” Demi asked Owen. “You’ve been quiet.”

  “Nothing to say,” Owen said banging a fist against the side of his skull. “Got a steel plate put in the old noggin’ after the war. Haven’t heard a tick all day.”

  “That explains a lot,” Demi said, shaking her head. She stared up at the huge cabin looming above them. It had no fewer than seven levels of decks, with the main structure rising another three stories above that. A solitary watchtower stood vigil over the entire structure, a forest green metal roof shielding it from above while at least a dozen chimneys poured wood smoke out into the mountain air.

  “How many people do they have in there?” Demi asked. They’d come armed with rubber bullets given what they were dealing with, but Demi found herself wondering if that would be enough.

  “I don’t know,” Bailey admitted. “You don’t notice much when you’re under their spell… you just kind of exist. There could be hundreds. I came through with five of my friends. They’re all in there.”

  “Let’s keep going,” Demi said. “We don’t have much time.”

  “You don’t want to come up with a plan?” Owen asked.

  “The longer we sit here planning, the more time those witches have to creep into our minds,” Demi said. “Time isn’t our friend. Besides, I have a plan—shoot them.”

  “I do love a good shoot-out,” Owen said with a grin. “Even if the bullets are just rubber. Let’s get a move on.”

  The three of them crept up the mountainside, the afternoon sun just beginning to sink towards the horizon when they reached the concrete base of the lodge. A wooden staircase rose up from the hillside, providing access to the lowest deck, where an unused hot-tub sat surrounded by dusty picnic tables. No one had been using this part of the lodge for a long time, that was clear.

  “This way,” Demi said, spotting a doorway into the lodge. It was unlocked, but the room inside was pitch-black and stank of stale sweat. Demi fumbled trough the darkness, and Bailey and Owen came in behind her. The old hunter flicked on his flashlight. The room was packed with dozens of people, all of them standing rigidly upright, their pupils reflecting the light as they stared vacantly into the darkness, never blinking. Their breathing was low and even, and it seemed to line up with the ticking in Demi’s head.

  “Holy Toledo,” Owen declared. “I’ve seen some messed-up stuff, but this takes the cake.”

  “They’re resting,” Bailey said. “The sisters don’t need them right now.”

  “Yeah, let’s not be here when the sisters realize they do need them,” Demi said, doing her best to ignore the incessant ticking in her head. She pushed her way through the catatonic drones towards a stairway at the far side of the room. It spiraled up through the ceiling, ascending into a vast great room that occupied nearly the entire level, its ceiling four stories above, past several layers of exposed wooden beams that crisscrossed the enormous open space.

  A picture window composed of a ten-by-ten-foot custom piece of paneless glass provided a panoramic view of the sun setting over the valley below. An ornate wooden bookstand sat in front of the window, a large, leather-bound book sitting atop. A low end-table stood nearby, the broken pieces of what appeared to be some sort of metronome laid out on a cloth. The ticking in her head was louder than it had ever been, and Demi clenched her eyes shut, only to find herself in that world of blackness.

  “You came,” a voice said, feminine but with a strange reverberant quality. The two white-clad specters appeared on either side, gray eyes glaring at her from the darkness. “So much pain,” they said as one. “All you want to do is bury it away. We can help you.”

  “What do you want?” Demi asked, instinctively reaching for her gun, only to find herself wearing the same kind of flowing white robe as the specters.

  “To help you,” they said. “You don’t have to keep slowly killing yourself. We can help you find peace.”

  “Peace,” Demi said slowly, feeling herself rocking back and forth in time with that endless clicking that now seemed to come from everywhere at once. It had been maddening before, but now there was something almost soothing about it. Her feet drifted off the ground. The two specters moved in front of her, faceless except for their round, glowing eyes. A drowsiness crept over her when she stared into the gray orbs, her breathing slow and regular. She blinked, sinking deeper and deeper into their gaze.

  Demi’s world erupted in fire, and her eyes shot open. Owen was waving a burning wad of paper in her face. The ancient book sat open on the bookstand, a number of its pages sacrificed for Owen’s rescue attempt. Demi blinked and realized that the great hall was now filled with dozens of blank-eyed drones, standing eerily still as they stared blindly past Demi and the others.

  “Lost you there for a second, kid,” Owen said, and he and Demi drew their guns.

  “You shouldn’t fight it,” the crowd said in unison, parting to allow two girls to move towards the window. One was a little taller than Demi, her hair dyed blonde, while the
other was a bit shorter, her hair black and chin-length. Their eyes glowed gray.

  “Looks like it’s the three of us versus… I don’t know,” Demi said. “Does a million sound too high?”

  “Seems ‘bout right to me,” Owen agreed.

  “There’s no need for this,” the blonde specter said, raising a hand towards Bailey. She shuddered, her eyes fluttering into the back of her head. When Bailey finally fell still, she wore the same vacant expression as the other drones.

  “Once ours, always ours,” the gray-eyed sisters said together. They raised their hands towards Owen, and the old hunter idly scratched his scalp. The sisters paused, their youthful faces twisting with uncertainty, then morphing into frustration when Owen stubbornly refused to succumb to their efforts.

  “Is this supposed to be doing something?” Owen asked, glancing over to Demi. “Kinda tickles.”

  “Oh, we do not have time for this,” Demi said before the sisters could move on to her. She raised her gun and fired two shots at the blonde sister, a rubber bullet hitting each of her kneecaps. The glowing-eyed girl collapsed forward, and Demi grabbed her by the shoulders, just like she’d grabbed so many prisoners bound for the interrogation table in another life. Those had been grown men, usually, trained soldiers. This girl didn’t weigh even a hundred pounds, and Demi threw her against the glass almost effortlessly.

  “All right, bitch,” Demi said, gripping the girl’s skull tightly and shoving her forehead hard against the window. It struck with enough force that a hairline fracture appeared in the glass. A stream of blood poured from the girl’s brow. “Try relaxing now.”

  “Stop,” the other sister declared, but Owen stepped in front of her, buying Demi a few precious moments while the crowd of drones surged forward.

  “What are you?” Demi demanded, slamming the girl into the window again, sending spider-web fractures through the glass.

  “We are the answer,” the girl said, spitting blood. Her eyes burned brighter than ever. “We are the master you will all serve.”

  “Shut up,” Demi said, shoving her back against the window. This time, the glass shattered altogether, and the girl went tumbling out, vanishing into the trees below.

  “What did you do?” the other sister asked, and Demi turned to find that the girl’s eyes were just brown now, no trace of the luminescence that had made her seem so haunting before. Behind her, the crowd began to break ranks, and the ticking in Demi’s head suddenly ceased.

  “You did it!” Bailey said, rushing forward to wrap Demi in a hug.

  “Hell,” Doug said, pushing his way through the crowd. “What did I miss?”

  “Demi threw a little girl out a window,” Owen declared unceremoniously. “Seems like it did the trick.”

  “What the hell was going on here?” Demi asked. “I don’t even know what I did to stop it.”

  “What did you girls get yourselves into?” Owen said, pointing accusingly to the old book and broken metronome. “That sure looks like a spell book to me. Who are you and how did you get your hands on a grimoire?”

  “I’m… I don’t know who I am,” the girl said, staring uncertainly out the broken window. “I can’t remember anything from before.”

  “What about the gray eyes?” Demi asked. “Those just came from nowhere?”

  “I don’t know anything about that,” the girl said, rushing to the window. “I just remember holding the metronome. I don’t know how or why. Then it broke, and I woke up here.”

  “She telling the truth?” Doug asked, looking at Demi. She hadn’t taken her eyes off the creepy teen.

  “I guess,” Demi said, unable to sense a lie, but still unsatisfied.

  “Sounds like you and your buddy got your hands on a cursed object,” Owen said. “Works great when you’re careful, but slip up for even a second, and it’s running the show. You’re just lucky only one of you had to die to break the curse.”

  “Come on,” Demi said. She tucked the grimoire under her arm, and Owen wrapped up the remains of the metronome. “I don’t know about you guys, but I could use a beer.”

  “Wait,” the girl said, her eyes wide and brimming with tears. “Where am I supposed to go?”

  “Yeah, what about her?” Doug asked, glancing at the girl. “We can’t just leave her after all this.”

  “Good point,” Owen said. “Who knows if those gray eyes pop back up again?”

  Demi shrugged. “She should fit in the trunk,” she declared at last. “Might have to move some of the guns, but we can make it work.”

  ***

  The moon was full, shining brightly through the trees beneath the now-empty lodge. A faint voice groaned at the base of a tree far downhill from the impressive mountain fortress, and a bloody hand reached up to steady itself. A bear growled in the darkness, moving cautiously towards the wounded girl. She collapsed amid the dead leaves, and the creature lumbered closer, pressing its nose against the girl’s hand.

  Her eyes flashed gray, and she clawed her way up onto its back. The bear’s pupils went small, and its breathing grew rhythmic. She clung fast to the beast, letting it carry her away from the place where she’d lost everything.

  Devil’s Forge

  Tennessee, July 2014

  The trees shook with a gentle breeze as Shawna pulled her jeep up in front of the cabin she had rented for the week. She and her husband—well, ex-husband now, although she still hadn’t gotten used to the “ex” part just yet—had taken their kids out to the Smokey Mountains nearly every summer for as long as she could remember. This year, she was all on her own. She’d found a little town called Devil’s Forge, tucked in between a trio of rolling mountains. Her cabin was a small affair, sitting on the western face of the tallest of the three peaks overlooking the tranquil river valley below.

  Unlike where she usually stayed with her family, her cabin was at least a mile from the next nearest campsite or rental property, accessible by a roughly paved private driveway that meandered for miles around the mountain. The cabin did have internet-access, her booking agent had assured her, and every other modern convenience.

  “Hey, guys,” Shawna said, holding her phone out in front of her while she video-chatted with her three teenaged children—Brooke and Blair, nineteen-year-old twins, and their brother, Colin, who had just turned seventeen. Brooke gave Shawna a disinterested look, and Blair and Colin sat in the background watching television, oblivious to her.

  “Hey, Mom,” Brooke said with a yawn. She was the wild one in the family, taking after Shawna herself in her youth. Her long hair was currently dyed black, and she wore vibrant red lipstick. Like Shawna, she was five-foot-five with a well-built athletic frame.

  “I wanted you guys to see where I’m staying,” Shawna said, whipping her phone around and rushing through the cabin, hastily exploring its sparsely decorated rooms for Brooke’s benefit. When she looked back at the screen Brooke’s head was wreathed in a plume of smoke.

  “What’s that?” Shawna asked suddenly. “Brooke, are you guys smoking pot again?”

  “Gotta go, Mom,” Brooke said quickly. “Love you.” Before Shawna could say another word, the screen went black. She groaned, collapsing into the easy chair in the middle of the cabin’s living room. Ever since the divorce the kids had been acting out—weed, sex, booze, and who knew what else. Brooke seemed to be the ringleader, but then, Shawna had been too at that age. If the judge hadn’t given her ex full custody, maybe she could have done something to keep her progeny on the straight and narrow.

  “I suck,” Shawna declared with a sigh, somehow finding the will to get up and get her things unpacked. That lasted only as long as it took her to find one of the bottles of wine she’d brought, and before long she was lounging in the hot-tub on the cabin’s porch. By the time the sun started creeping towards the horizon, she was already half a bottle in. It was probably beautiful, but she was totally engrossed with the social media feed on her phone.

  Her ex might have tossed her out
like a bad pair of jeans in real life, but on the internet they were still friends. Shawna found herself glued to his homepage, poring over pictures of him and his new girlfriend, a 28-year-old he’d taken up with amid the throes of a sort of mid-life crisis. Judging by their pictures, they were traveling a lot—Paris, New York, Miami. And it wasn’t all romantic getaways—the kids were featured prominently in many of the pictures, and they looked like they were having the time of their lives. She found a picture of the blonde whore and the twins striking sultry poses in their bikinis at a beach somewhere. In another, the whore wore a slinky evening gown with a scandalously plunging neckline while she stood with her arm around Colin’s waist. The boy looked positively ecstatic. In another, her ex and his whore stood amid a gathering of some of Shawna’s closest friends. It was like after the divorce the whore had stepped in and taken Shawna’s place entirely.

  No one missed Shawna, that much she was sure, and not just because she wasn’t twenty years younger with a couple of silicone sandbags strapped to her chest. The split had left her broken and angry, and she’d found a way to alienate everyone in her life, driving them away as she spiraled out of control. She’d done things she wasn’t proud of, allowed her anger to turn her into the kind of person she’d never wanted to be.

  “This is stupid,” Shawna said, pressing the power button of her phone and tossing it onto the deck. She leaned back into the warm, bubbling waters. This week was about clearing her head, taking her life back after eight months of madness. She wasn’t going to dwell on the past anymore or obsess over the things she couldn’t have. She needed to become herself again.

  Filled with the kind of energy she hadn’t known in years, Shawna got herself dressed and threw on a pair of hiking boots. It was almost dark, but she figured she had an hour or so of twilight left before it would be time to turn in for good. She would find the cabin’s router when she got back and disable it, and she vowed not to charge her phone during her stay. If anyone needed her, the cabin had a landline. But no one was going to need her. That was okay—right now she needed herself all to herself.