Jessie Delacroix_Fright Night at the Haunted Inn

by Constance Barker

  “Just a little further, Leo. Hang on…everything will be okay.”

  We tried to work our way to the edge of the crowd, and Leo seemed to barely notice the enticing cleavage of festive frauleins spilling out everywhere around us. Beer maids in lederhosen were carrying large mugs of foamy beer, four or five pints making a large arc around each of their fists. Other young women were wearing short, flared green or blue or red skirts with corset fronts and white poufy tops that showed off their nearly bare assets. I felt like a 12-year-old-boy and made a mental note to buy myself an expensive push-up bra when I got home.

  Ginny had apparently tuned in to the attire of the ladies too. “Boy, oh boy! This place makes Hooters look like a meeting of the Decency League at the Church of Puritanical Virtues!”

  Finally we got to an area where the crowd was much thinner, and I could see a small pond 50 feet ahead. People on the far bank were sitting on blankets, walking dogs, picnicking, and a few were roller-skating on some strap-on devices with oversized wheels.

  Beyond the end of the long pond were half a dozen men on tall white horses in front of the gate to a large estate that looked like a small castle. Several other horsemen were making a leisurely rounds around the small lake – one horse about every 50 feet or so.

  In front of us was a wall of hay bales as high as our chins. Ginny helped Leo pull one off the top, and we sat on it with the wall of hay between the pond and us. Boys with large burlap sacks were loading them up with hay from a loose bale nearby and scattering it over horse droppings, which were not hard to find.

  “There, Anika.” I pointed over the hay bales and across the pond to a slender woman in a white dress with diagonal red stripes.

  “Yupper. It’s me!”

  I looked for Leo, but, again, he was nowhere around.

  “Up here,” he said, sitting on the lowest branch of a big shade tree, hanging a foot or two above the highest hay bale. He jumped down, about six feet, and fell to the ground, severely gashing his arm on a sharp rock. “Geez…I forgot that I can’t climb and jump like a vampire anymore. I didn’t think about that when I climbed up here so easily from the hay bales.” Then he rubbed his ankle. “But you know…it’s kind of nice to feel a little pain again.”

  “You’re bleeding really badly, Leo, “ I told him. I grabbed his wrist and showed him the long gash on the back of his arm. I waved my hand over it, and the blood and wound were gone, but it left a long, thick, winding scar on the back of his forearm from his wrist to his elbow.

  “Hey, cool! It looks like a snake. I’ll just get a tattoo over it to make it look a little more sinister and venomous.”

  He looked at Anika and then at the woman across the pond…then back at Anika. “Did I hear you say that the skinny woman across the pond is you, Anika?”

  “Yeah, I’ve changed,” she told him.

  “You’re much more beautiful now,” he said with a grin.

  “I know!”

  “So, what are we watching for,” Ginny inquired, “now that we’ve spotted you over yonder across the lake, Anika?”

  “Well, that’s what I’m here to find out. I’m not sure! But, see that little white pavilion up the hill? That’s where Gus was selling leather slippers and sauerkraut jelly…”

  All three of us let out an involuntary sound of bewilderment.

  “Well…that’s what he was good at making. The slippers are wonderful, and I had just bought a pair a little while before this. Look! I’m waving to him in his booth there now. And he canned the jelly in small jars, and people loved it.”

  “Okay…” My mind was working, but mostly the wheels were just spinning. “…so, you just met Gus for the first time a little while ago, and…was there any kind of connection or friendship or anything?”

  “Well, you know, he doesn’t speak, so I couldn’t talk to him or bargain over the price or anything. And I didn’t want to use my witchy telepathy on someone I didn’t know – that witch stuff still wasn’t looked upon very favorably at this time. But I felt that nice warm ‘Gus’ feeling…you know.”

  Yes, I did know.

  “And what about my brother?” Leo asked. “Was Moondance here that day too…or is he here now, I should say?”

  “Yes, he was hanging out around Gus’s shop when I was there, and I saw a black cat running around the hillside pretty often too. Anyway, keep your eyes peeled, because any minute now, Gus is going to walk down the hill towards me, and our lives are going to change forever. Look and see if you can figure out what happened to put us all together into one being.”

  “I got my ninja senses cranked up to ten, Anika.” Ginny had her forearms and chin on top of the wall of hay bales and was scanning the area across the lake closely. “We’ll figure out who done this to you.” She paused and wrinkled her face. “Is it just me, or does anyone else feel a sense of impending doom all of a sudden?”

  Ginny was right. I felt it too. “I’m getting kind of an ominous feeling too, Gin – like something bad is blowing in with the wind.”

  I had no sooner spoken than I saw something moving over the lake. A man on a white horse strutted slowly by the skinny Anika, but neither he nor anybody else seemed to see what I was seeing. My jaw dropped and I felt myself gulp. A swarm black evil spirits – demons of some sort – were assembling right over the other Anika’s head, and Gus began to march quickly down the hill towards her.

  “Anika, is there any reason that, um…you know…dark spirits would want to come after you back then?”

  “Well, I did have a reputation for being the most powerful witch in Eastern Europe. But I was always protected by the huge coven back home in Romania. Our power together was too great for the League of Malevolent Malefactors to snap one of us up and turn us into a cult member of their gloom squad.”

  The black spirits began to swirl over her head until they turned into a blur. Still, no one was aware of it except for me. “H-How about when you left Romania to come here, to Oktoberfest?”

  “I’d be easy pickings…but I never saw any evil spirits, Jessie.”

  Maybe the spirits were using magic to keep her from feeling their presence. Gus arrived a few feet behind Anika, with Moondance at his side. That’s when the black blur above her head began to transform into a funnel – a tornado of evil, descending on her to suck the younger, thinner Anika into their dimension and lifestyle of evil. She still didn’t know that there was any kind of a threat as she turned and saw Gus.

  “Watch this…look everywhere now. After I looked at Gus, I felt my feet leave the ground.”

  Sure enough, her feet came a few inches off the ground. Gus was trying to form some kind of shield around her, but he didn’t have the power, and his shield was very weak. Other nearby people saw her come off the ground and hollered, “Witch! She’s a witch!”

  “But I wasn’t doing that!” Anika told us.

  “I know, Anika. The League is trying to suck you in!”

  “What!”

  Moondance was next to Gus, leaping in small circles with his tail and whiskers high. He was tuned into something, but he didn’t seem to know what it was.

  The funnel cloud began to spin faster, and she began to rise a little more. I knew I had to do something. People were running towards the airborne Anika with sticks, thinking she was the evil presence, and Moondance tried to protect her. As he leapt from the ground, he turned into a full-sized black panther. The people stopped, but Moondance couldn’t hold that form for long and began to shrink back into the black cat.

  I knew I had to do something, as the crowd had grown to a mob and started towards her again. I tapped my cheek twice and then blew on my finger to speed the magic across the lake. In a literal flash, Anika disappeared inside of Gus, whose form took her place beneath the funnel.

  The spirits stopped and dropped him, but the people kept approaching with bad intentions on their mind. I tapped my cheek again, knowing that Gus was too slow to get them out of there. The cat would be a better option
to get them out of there fast. I joined Gus with Moondance, and the form of the black cat replaced the old savant, as the spirits above began to disperse.

  The cat scampered off in the direction of the little castle, and I thought they would be safe. But I was wrong. Every dog on the green hill began chasing after Moondance. And with no tree in the path for him to climb, I knew they needed Anika’s witch powers to get them out of there, so I tapped my cheek again. Moondance morphed into Anika at full stride, but the dogs were gaining on her. I was out of ideas, but Anika just kept running, wiggling her fingers as she ran right into the back end of a white horse and disappeared.

  Just as two dogs leapt for her, she was gone. The horse reared and the rider sat erect in a jolt. He rounded the end of the lake at full gallop and started heading right towards our wall of hay. As they approached, I recognized the face of the horseman – it was Eddy! But now we were in danger of being run over by a galloping horse.

  As the steed jumped to clear the bales of hay in front of us, it was clear that those hooves would soon be stomping on my face. I tapped my bloodstone talisman, and a glimmering circle opened right in front of the horse. With a dozen barking dogs on their tail, the horse and conjoined riders sprang through the circle and disappeared. The gateway closed, and the leaping dogs landed beside us. They looked around foolishly, snorted, and walked back to the other side of the lake.

  We were all a little unnerved – except for Ginny, of course.

  “Shazam! That was the best part of this shindig so far! That’s what I call a fun-filled evening of adventure!”

  “But, darn it…” Anika seemed a little forlorn. “…I still didn’t see what happened to turn me and Gus and Moondance into one person.”

  That really seemed to disappoint her, so I slowly raised my hand.

  “Um…I think I might have had something to do with it, Anika. I didn’t want you to get hurt or swallowed up by those demons.”

  “They were really here?”

  “A small army of them, yes. But I have no idea where I sent all of you through that wormhole.”

  “I do,” she said. “It was still 1833, but we ended up Louisiana bayou country. Now I know why! You sent us to a place that felt safe to you – your mother’s home. We never met your Granny or mom, Jessie, but we moved around the bayou a lot, since we didn’t age very fast.”

  “Yeah, why is that?” Ginny scratched her head and leaned in for the answer.

  “Well, since Moondance is a vampire, he’s immortal. That’s why we spend most of our time as the cat when were at home or when we’re sleeping. We don’t age when we’re Moondance. I only get older when I’m using my own form, so Gus and Eddy aren’t aging now, only me. Actually, I’m not aging now either – and neither are you – because we don’t age when we’re not in our own timeline. None of us are aging right now because we’re just visitors here, even though time is passing back home.”

  “Cool!” Ginny seemed genuinely excited about that. “When I have my class reunion in a couple years, maybe people will notice that I look a few days younger because of all my adventures in other dimensions.”

  “I’m sure they will, Gin.

  Chapter Sixteen

  We found an open picnic table near the little lake and spent the rest of the evening at the festival. We had to wait till the moon set to find Lilianna anyway. We had a really nice talk about Anika’s days in Louisiana.

  “Well, Eddy and his horse, Maximillian, were jumping right over a big campfire when they came out the other end of your wormhole, Jessie. Scared the heck out of some hunters, so he just kept on running till he got to a nice quiet spot. He really seemed to like it in Louisiana –” Anika began, “ – fresh air, good fishing, alligators to wrestle with and eat – and make boots out of. Trouble was, he didn’t realize that we were all sharing the same skin now. He knew something was different, but he didn’t know we were in there with him. And Moondance and Gus and I weren’t exactly sure where we were either.”

  I was feeling a little sheepish about what I had done to them. “Yeah, I can only imagine that it must have been weird.”

  “You might say that, Jess – but it’s a heckuva lot better than being sucked into the evil empire or being beaten to death with sticks and stones for witchcraft. Anyway, I am the only one who can come out when Eddy is wearing the skin, I guess, because I’m the one who joined us together with him. Trouble was, I couldn’t come out unless he was on the horse, which took a while for me to figure out. I guess I should have been a little more precise with my magic, but I pulled us all into both Eddy and the horse. That’s how I got the extra heft around my tummy – all the horse matter had to go somewhere. My witch magic isn’t as good your goddess powers. That’s why Gus and Moondance didn’t bulk up like I did. But I really like my new shape.”

  Ginny snorted twice, finding some humor in Anika’s remark.

  “You know, Anika,” I said timidly, “Since I turned you all into this shape shifter entity, I could probably separate you all back to your original selves.”

  “What! Why, I’d have been dead for 150 years by now if you hadn’t changed us – or else I’d be an eternal spirit of evil. I don’t think I could get through a day without my constant companions. I’m sure the others feel the same way.”

  I smiled. That made me feel better, and her sentiment was genuine.

  We talked all night. Eddy told us that they stayed in Louisiana through the Civil War and then started traveling the country. His faithful horse passed away after the Spanish-American War, and he had to replace it with a mule in order for the others to be able to morph out. Later on he saved up and bought the Harley he uses now. They picked that up in Milwaukee.

  Then Moondance came out and told us how he was drawn to New York in 1916, before the U.S. entered World War I. He sent Leo away from the table and told us how he found his brother Leo on Ellis Island, with his wife Lilianna. Leo was approaching his mid-fifties, and Lilianna was in her late forties. Before he left, he gave Leo back the gift (or curse) of eternal life, which Leo would pass on to his wife, as Kaya had requested.

  As it turned out, Leo told his brother that Lily saved his life during a full moon on the ship that took them to America when some men were trying to throw him overboard because of a small poker debt. A few growls and howls was all it took, but he’d have been dead without her power as a werewolf.

  Gus felt like an eternal presence. He told me that the images of him I saw on the hill were projections of his present existence and not the Gus of 1833. He knew nothing of me or my presence back then, but had figured out that I was there for a purpose now. He made sure I found him and Anika and Moondance at the festival. Then he told us it was time to find Lilianna and return to Whispering Pines.

  Time had passed quickly with all the stories, and the moon was safely tucked away below the horizon now. The huge crowd and the horses had all gone at some point, but the rising sun was bringing the merchants back to their little shops. We bought a nice sundress for Lilianna and went to the surrounding woods where we had left her. We only called her name a few times before we saw her timid naked form come out from a small clump of trees very near her sister’s final resting place.

  “I’m here,” was all she said.

  We clothed her and tried to comfort her in the aftermath of Kaya’s death.

  “I saw it all,” she said. “I regained my senses the moment that the arrow penetrated Kaya. I went to the top of these trees, and her spirit was right there with me too. I heard all of her words.” She turned and looked at Leo, and tears came as she tried to speak again. “I don’t know if you can ever accept me as Kaya’s replacement, but I know love will come easily for me.”

  Leo hugged her, rubbing her back gently and then caressing her face with his hand. “You are not anyone’s replacement,” he told her, and we could already see the love blooming. “We have a year to grow together, and I have no doubt that it is you, Lilianna, whom fate has always intended for me. Our
love for Kaya will be but the foundation of something bigger, stronger, and eternal that you and I will build together.”

  “Kinda touching,” Ginny said, sniffling back a tear.

  “Ya think?” My tears were flowing too, and I think Anika morphed into Moondance just to hide her emotions. It was really warm and poignant, and I couldn’t even imagine a 21st Century man saying anything like that.

  “Send Anika out,” I told Moondance. We need Eddy to take us home on his Harley now.”

  “She’ll be out in a minute.”

  “Hey, lookie over there where the sun is coming up, Jess.” Ginny was pointing to some trees in the distance. “Them there tall trees look just like the whispering pines behind the Inn. They kinda make me feel like we’re already back home.”

  “You’re right about that, Gin.” Maybe this stand of hundred-foot pines was part of the worldwide network that could transport us around the world and through space and time. “Let’s take a walk over there.”

  “Sure thing. I’ll grab a bag of fresh donuts for us at the little bakeshop over there. Toss me a couple of them silver coins, Jess.”

  They did smell good, and I reached in my pocket and pulled out two coins for Ginny. “Here you go!”

  Leo liked the smell too. “You know, I had forgotten how good food smells, and I’m starving! I haven’t eaten for over 70 years! You know, Lily, we should learn how to bake. It might be a good business. Hey, Miss Delacroix, can you drop us off in 1886? That’s where we came from before we got to your Inn.”

  Wow. I hadn’t really realized that they were from so far in the past. I never stopped to do the math. “Sure, I guess. Where are you going?”

  He looked at Lilianna. “Where do you want to live?”

  “I don’t want to go to Vienna or Bratislava or Budapest. Tramador was there.”

  “He’s dead now, Lily. No more worries.”

  “I don’t care. I want to go back to Romania, where my mama and papa raised me – and I’ve always wanted to live on the Black Sea.”