by M J Waverly
“I took care of her, but I want her Book of Shadows. “And the Blood Collector will reward me when I bring you to him.” Rob held out his hand, a black tendrils similar to the Blood Collector’s flowed from his hands.
A dark taint enveloped me, invisible ropes of energy circled my body. This must his magic, trying to trap me for the Blood Collector.
A large, muscular man wearing “I love Fishing’ tee-shirt rushed over to the Iceberg Cooler booth. “Love your coolers, guys.”
The magic dissipated as Rob lost his focus. “Glad you do, now get lost.”
Jason grabbed me by the hand, and we bolted to the Visitor’s Center. I had to find Kylantha. We had to find Teresa’s Book of Shadows before Rob or the Blood Collector did.
Several squirrels and a raccoon waited on the Bear Falls Trail side of the Visitor’s Center. “They’ll lead us to Kylantha.”
“The raccoon is waving us over,” Jason said between breaths as we continued to run.
A larger raccoon stepped forward and motioned for us to follow.
Jason's jaw dropped opened. “I can't believe—they talk."
“This way.” The raccoon scrambled down the dirt path on all four legs followed by the squirrels. They guided us down a heavily wooded side trail.
My hiking boots crunched on the sticks and dried leaves, and I hitched my messenger bag up my shoulder to help balance. I didn’t want to trip over the embedded rocks and twisty roots. In the distance, Asher River gushed loudly.
The raccoon moved back a curtain of interwoven branches revealing the fairy. She glowed with an ethereal light. “Kylantha welcomes you.” He waved his hand forward for us to follow him.
“Whoa.” Jason came to an abrupt halt.
"I am glad that you have brought your friend, please make introductions Sidney."
I motioned at Jason, hoping to sound formal and impress him. “Let me introduce you to Jason Hunsinger.” I motioned toward Kylantha. “Meet the guardian of this land and protector of all that dwell within.”
Jason bowed his head. "It is a privilege to meet you my lady and to be of service to you."
I thought he overdid it; however, it’s always good to show respect. Nana would have approved.
Kylantha gave a slight nod. “We welcome you to the forest and the mountain, Jason Hunsinger, and we thank you for your help.
“We found the one, who enchanted George to do dark magic. His name is Rob McCloskey. He’s one of the Nightstalers and he killed Teresa.”
Kylantha’s wings drooped, and her eyes took on a haunted look. “This is horrible news. If he killed Teresa, and he’s working with the Blood Collector, then he may be too strong. He wants Teresa’s Book of Shadows. We need to find it, now.”
Kylantha’s eyes widened. “You will find it in her desk. Hurry, find it.”
Chapter Sixteen
We climbed back up Bear Falls trail and snuck into the Visitor’s Center. Jason and I made our way to Ranger Duncan’s locked office. Crime scene tape hung draped around the door.
Little lightning forks burst from Jason’s hand, and the doorknob turned and the door opened.
“Impressive,” I said.
He smiled.“I have my moments.
We entered Teresa’s office. Blood stained the carpet. Sadness swept through me. Teresa Duncan had been a nice lady with a good heart, who protected Thunder Mountain Park.
I around the desk and turned on the light. I searched through the drawers, and I found her day planner. It was brown leather, but it shimmered and sparkled with magic. The cover transformed into a beautiful painting A picture of a winged fairy similar to Kylantha and a black bear dancing in a forest. My hands trembled. This was Teresa Duncan’s Book of Shadows.
I felt like I needed to express respect to it. I gently touched it. “I’m sorry she died. I’m trying to stop her murderer from bringing more evil to this land she protected. Help me.”
A dark, mossy green light encircled the book, and the bear and fairy danced on the cover like an animated cartoon. The front cover flipped open to today’s date.
The numbers whirled, and words began forming.
If you have found this, then I am dead. George and I were once lovers, and he died because he didn’t agree with the members of his coven, the Nightstalkers and their plans for the park. Over the years, his gentle spirit has kept watch over this land and protected all who dwell within the boundaries of the park.
However, those in allegiance to the Blood Collector want to take over guardianship of this land, so they can free him fro the Void.
You must stop them. Use the sigils and magic contained in this book to stop the Nightstalkers and the Blood Collector, so that Kylantha and the other spirits will be safe.
The sigils formed on the page and spun in the air.
“What magic is this?” Jason asked.
“Good magic.” I kept my eyes on the complex floating symbols, which were round with flowing lines and smooth arcs. A gentleness emanated from them.
I waved my hand, and the sigils flowed into my outstretched hand like little winged spirits. Perhaps they were. They tingled on the palm of my hand then soaked into my skin.
Jason lifted his chin. “You’ve got this, Sidney.”
I grabbed Teresa’s Book of Shadows and dropped in gently into my messenger bag.
“Good instincts.” He rubbed his hands together. “Let’s get back to the cave.”
We rushed out of the Visitor’s Center and back down Bear Falls Trail. I had my messenger bag and two Books of Shadows. I needed a place to regroup. I had to stop Rob McCloskey from using more dark magic to release the Blood Collector from the Void. Cloverville was in danger.
We were almost at the end, near the side trail we took to the cave when George materialized and blocked our way. “Where are you going?”
I came to a complete stop, but Jason stepped in front of me.
“Being chivalrous? I heard you two made kissy faces.” George made a loud, wet smacking noise.
The ghost zipped around Jason and hovered in front of my face. Even through the polar bear head, George’s breath smelled like rotting earth. "I thought you were mad at him for being with that other girl. Have you had a change of heart, Sidney?” Cartoon heart bubbles erupted from George’s head. He popped them and the heart bubbles turned to blood.
I summoned every bit of courage I had within me to look at the ghost in his red, ectoplasm encrusted eyes. “Rob McCloskey, a Nightstalker, bewitched you with dark magic, George. You weren’t always an evil ghost, hurting animals and people.”
He narrowed his eyes. I felt a clawing, scratching sensation within my mind. I pushed back. George was trying to possess me. This power was dark, all-encompassing. Choking, wanting me.
George laughed. “You’re good.”
I envisioned a wall, a fortress around my mind, using my telepathy. The image formed, and I could feel the power encircle my essence. I had to get through to George. “The Nightstalkers killed you. One of them married Babs, and she’s in danger. She needs you.”
George swayed back and forth as if my words had hit him hard. He punched his polar bear head over and over. “No. That’s not true.”
I stepped back and pressed myself against Jason.
George slapped his paws against his chest, where his heart would be. “Babs loved me. I loved her. I didn't want to hurt her, but I was caught up in the magic. Then I fell in love with another woman. And when I told…" He looked behind my shoulder as if the door to his past life had opened.
I waited.
George slammed the polar bear head back over his face.His jogging suit disappeared and his fake bear fur transformed into the real thing. George morphed into a real polar bear.
Jason’s arm wrapped my waist. George charged at us. His cold wet polar bear nose almost touched mine. He jumped up and down on his front paws, digging deep into the Georgia red clay.
George’s frost-covered fur sparkled in the early morning sun. “I
don’t believe you. The Blood Collector is good. He freed me from her. He gave me power. Now, you’ll understand our pain, Sidney Latimer. Real pain of an aching soul.”
The wind blew, and ice covered the ground. George collapsed in upon himself and then disappeared as bits of polar fur blew in the cold breeze.
George's laughter rang out in the air and then a sparkling mist funneled like a small cyclone in and around Jason. He pushed me away from him. “Run, Sidney.”
“Jason!" I screamed
He dropped to his knees. His tongue hung out, and saliva dripped from his mouth as if he had been bitten by a rabid animal. Ice crystals tipped his hair. He reached for his chest. "Hello, honey." George's voice came out Jason's mouth.
I reacted on instinct. I reached out with the palm of my hand and placed it on Jason's chest, pushed against his ribs. “Jason feel me.”
I closed my eyes and tapped the magic within me. I envisioned golden sunlight I envisioned starlight. I envisioned moonlight. I envisioned the light from within me all swirling together to create a connection to Jason. My power came from the light like my Nana’s Book of Shadows had written.
I envisioned Jason’s heart and the light within me flowed through my hand through my fingertips and pulsed against his skin through his rib cage and into his heart. The possessed, broken-veined red in Jason’s eyes faded turning green.
I kept visualizing sunlight, starlight, even the flower-shaped nightlight from my childhood. I focused with an intensity I didn't know I possessed.
Nana's called out somewhere far away or from the past. "You can do this Sidney. You can do this." She was alive. Or existed somewhere she couldn’t return.
George exploded out of Jason’s chest. “Jason,” I screamed and ran to him.
George howled n pain and disappeared. Jason collapsed onto his knees and threw up.
“Sidney." Jason rose to his knees and grabbed my hand. Sweat dripped down his face. His eyes were bloodshot with broken veins.
"Come on, we need to get you to a doctor," I said
Jason shook his head. “We have to stop George and the Blood Collector.”
I helped Jason to his feet. “We’re not far from the cave, can you make it?”
Dark magic permeated the interior like a thick gelatinous mass. The weight pressed down on my lungs.
Jason touched my hand. “The light is within you.”
Rob McCloskey and Babs stepped out from the back of the cave. He held a gun to her head. “Stop right there. George, I have your honey.”
Light formed and George appeared as the Iceberg Polar Bear mascot in the blue velour jogging suit. Levitating near the cave roof, he removed the costumed head, and his eyes glittered with a mixture of madness and hate. “Let her go., Rob, or you will regret it.”
“George, it’s really you.” Babs Abernathy’s eyes widened in recognition, and then tears splashed down her cheeks.
“Yes, Babs. It’s me.” George sounded sad.
“Where have you been, honey?” Babs’s voice cracked She reached out with her hand, but Rob pulled her back to his side.
“I’ve been here at Thunder Mountain Park, honey.” Skin reformed over the wildlife teeth marks and the missing chunks on George’s face.
Rob dragged Babs closer and pressed the gun against her right temple. “Ah, shut up. You can join him in a minute. First, we have business to do. Master, I’m ready.” Rob called out. The tattooed sigils glowed on his arm.
Babs whimpered.
“Don’t hurt her,” George pleaded.
A black fog drifted into the cave and formed into the hooded and cloaked figure of the Blood Collector. The scent of decaying flesh filled the cave.
I nearly gagged, but didn’t dare make a sound. I pressed my back against Jason’s chest, and I could feel his heart beating.
”Very good, George. Finally, you’re cooperating.” Black tendrils flowed from the Blood Collector’s hands and trapped George in their web of dark magic. He couldn’t move.
Babs Abernathy fainted and collapsed onto the ground. Rob stepped over her unconscious body.
Jason and I remained quiet, hoping not to be noticed by the Blood Collector.
“The Blood Collector swooped down in front of Rob. Now, you can open the gateway.”
Rob nodded. The tattoo sigils on his arm lifted, hovered, and then slammed against the left side of the cave with a loud explosion. I slapped my hands against my ear and stumbled away from Jason.
The Blood Collector swirled around Jason, and then rushed into his body, possessing him.
Jason dropped to his knees and shouted as he held onto his head as if battling for control of his mind.
“Don’t,” I shouted. “Leave him alone.”
Jason lifted his head, and his eyes glowed demon red.“Open the gateway, and then I’ll free him,” Jason’s lips moved, but he answered in the Blood Collector’s deep and sinister voice.
I couldn’t open the gateway and let whatever was on the other side into our world, but I would pretend I would do it. I pressed my hand against the first sigil that had been on Rob’s arm now on the cave wall. I summoned the light within me, the magic from my Nana’s Book of Shadows and from Teresa Duncan’s Book of Shadows, and the first sigil changed from tattoo ink to blood.
“Don’t think to double-cross me.” Jason/Blood Collector watched me. “Use her, or he dies.”
I glared defiantly and squeezed my hands.
Rob McCloskey smoothed his hand over the cave wall. “Here. We want to direct the magic here.”
I held my hand to the next symbol, and the ink transformed into blood.
From my peripheral vision, outside of the cave entrance, I saw a squirrel watching me from behind a tree trunk. I couldn’t make eye contact because it would alert the Blood Collector.
“How do I know you’ll release Jason once I open the doorway?” I asked.
“You don’t.” The Blood Collector laughed like a slime ball villain.
I visualized sunlight, starlight, and moonlight surrounding me, illuminating my body.
I set my right hand on the third inky symbol, only two more to go.
I held my left hand up, and from the woods, squirrels, coyotes, bobcats, and birds stormed into the cave and attacked Rob. He shouted as he smacked at the furry mass of animals, biting, scratching at him.
Jason/Blood Collector waved his hands.
A squirrel landed in Jason’s hair. I ran to him, turned his face to mine. “I summon all the light within me. Take your darkness and go.” I grabbed Jason’s head and kissed him.
”The Blood Collector rushed out of Jason’s body and through me. My body temperature dropped like I’d taken a plunge into icy water.
The Blood Collector hovered above Jason like an evil phantom with his torn and ragged robes, similar to images I’d seen of Death—the scythe and dark hood look.
I caught a glimpse of the Blood Collector’s ravaged and emaciated face, his skin like aged human beef jerky clinging to his bony face.
Free from the dark magic, George rushed at the Blood Collector. “You took her from me. You took my Teresa from me.” The hiker ghost and the Blood Collector battled it out in a supernatural blur as they flung one another around the cave and against the rock walls like phantom wrestlers.
The three blood sigils appeared along with the sigils in ink. The magic I’d absorbed from the two Book of Shadows surged through me. Light glowed from my hand. I extended my index finger and used it like a pencil and began reforming the sigils on the cave wall.
Light reshaped the lines. The bloody sigils turned green like chlorophyll from the trees. Photosynthesis. Light magic.
I summoned the light within me, and envisioned the more gentle, more round sigils from my Book of Shadows and from Teresa Duncan’s Book of Shadows. The images came to me like a Jedi in meditation.
I placed my palm agains the fourth ink symbol. Light flowed from me, and the sigil turned green, yellow, orange like the autumn lea
ves in the forest around Thunder Mountain.
The Blood Collector hurled George away. He slammed up against the wall and slid down. The ghost had a burst of light explode from within George’s shimmer faded in and out. His glow began to dim.
Finally, the fifth symbol. I touched it and the inky symbol metamorphosized into a leaf-shaped rune.
All five sigils formed a circle around me. The once bloody sigils cocooned in light transformed into hearts, beating hearts. Good hearts. Nature. Both positive sources of energy.
“No.” The Blood Collector hurled a bolt of electricity at the sigils Bright light like a small sun filled the cave.
Kylantha appeared in front of me and caught the lightning redirected it back to the Blood Collector. The tendrils of his robe, snaked like nebulous fingers, grabbed the Rob McCloskey and snagged him within the folds like a spider wrapping its next meal into its web.
Kylantha waved her staff as I raised my hand pushing more and more power into the sigils. The three hearts and two leaves, pulsing with energy and life.
“On the count of three, disconnect from the sigils,” Kylantha shouted.
I nodded.
I had no idea on how to disconnect, so I imagined scissors. Big giant scissors cutting my ties to the sigils.
“One. Two. Three.” Kylantha called out.
I let go. Lightning flashed. A loud crack echoed in the cave as a jagged slash formed down one wall. A green light glowed. Something dark and small rushed out followed by strange laughter.
On the other side of the cave wall, and the rock slid back like an elevator door, awaiting its next passengers. Flames erupted, and a dark, sulfurous smoke drifted like an evil miasma. The Blood Collector and Rob McCloskey were sucked into the flames.
The wall slid back in place. The Blood Collector and Rob McCloskey were on a one-way trip to the Void.
Jason had collapsed to the ground. I dropped down to my knees, and pushed back the damp hair from his forehead. “Jason. Jason.”
He moaned and rubbed the back of his head. “What happened? I feel like I went scuba diving without a tank.”
Kylantha glided over to us. I could see her hiking boots underneath her gown. “We have sealed the gateway for now. The Blood Collector will be back.
