The shed door opened and Mom walked in carrying a small cast-iron pot along with a soda bottle filled with a black liquid. She knelt down beside me and placed the pot at the twelve o'clock position and then unscrewed the cap on the pop bottle. I hunched over to get a close look at what she was doing and my stomach started doing backflips the moment she began pouring the inky black liquid into the pot.
"What's that stuff?" I asked. "It smells like ass!"
"It's an extract of enchanted juniper root and sacred tallow," she said, screwing the cap back on. "If someone or something detects my magic and decides to take a shot at us while we're releasing the spirit, with any luck you'll be protected. Now smear some under your eyes. You too, Marcus."
I scrunched up my nose and gave her a disgusted look. "You're not serious, are you?"
She heaved a sigh as she stuck two fingers into the pot and promptly smeared some of the disgusting goop on my face. I guess that answered my question.
Marcus gingerly dipped an index finger into the pot and applied two thick, black streaks under his eyes which made him look like an emaciated American football player.
"Yep, this stuff definitely smells like ass," he said as he scrunched up his nose. "Why around the eyes, by the way?"
Mom covered her face with the muck and said, "You've heard the eyes are the window to the soul?"
"Yeah," said Marcus.
"Where do you think the saying came from? Your soul experiences the mortal world through your eyes, Marcus. If a counter-spell somehow gets through the sentinels surrounding the shed, it could go straight through your peepers and infect the very fabric of your soul. When that happens, your spiritual essence will wind up in the hands of the person sending the dark spell, and you'll be in a world of hurt awful bloody fast. This ointment should prevent it from happening – just call it supernatural sunscreen."
I motioned for Marcus to step back from the circle as Mom wiped her hands on her apron and knelt. She was silent for a moment and then held out her hands to begin the spell. Instantly the atmosphere inside the shed tingled with energy, making the marble ring glow like a fluorescent bar. The backpack began thrashing violently within the protective circle and I reached out my left hand to feel Mom's spell take shape.
"Spirit!" my mother bellowed. "Be released and take form within my ring!"
A hazy blue cloud drifted out of the backpack and floated clumsily around the confines of the circle. With each contact, the invisible wall of magic surrounding the protective circle spat out blinding flecks of energy that bounced across the concrete floor like sparks from a welder's torch. I crawled over to the six o'clock position and watched carefully as Mom got back to her feet, her face a mask of grim determination.
And I had to admit it, she looked every inch the professional witch.
"Speak thy name, spirit!" my mother called out with calm authority. The ghostly cloud swirled around at the sound of her voice, and I could hear a faint whisper emanating from the middle of the circle. I silenced my thoughts in the hope that I could hone in on its magical signature and I couldn't quite make out whether I was hearing a male or female voice.
"John Stearne," the spirit whispered. "I was John Stearne and my time is long past. I shouldn't be here. You shouldn't be here."
Mom pursed her lips tightly and watched as the cloud of energy grew brighter, bleaching out the inside of the shed. "Why do you choose to dwell in the world of the living, spirit?" she asked, maintaining a strong measure of authority in her voice.
The cloud drifted closer to my mother, the swirling vapour crackling loudly with patterns of energy.
"'Tis not a choice," it said, this time a little bit louder. "It tore me away from my place of rest. It peels away what little remains of who I was. I sinned in life. Perhaps it is because of my sins that it demands penance from me."
"Who?" Mom asked.
"That which has always been and always shall be," the spirit said. "It tempts and it tantalizes. It does as it pleases, for that is its purpose. It fears that which is to come."
Marcus gave me a nervous look, and I motioned for him to keep calm.
"Why would someone pull a spirit into the mortal realm, Mom?" I asked.
"That's the mystery," she said without taking her eyes off the spectre. "Whoever is responsible, they're not at all concerned about flouting the natural order of life and death."
She stretched out her arms again and took a deep breath. "Spirit, are there others like you who are trapped between here and there?"
The cloud seemed to recoil as if it had been stung by her question. It reduced by half, taking it away from the magic wall around the circle, and the sparks ceased.
"I know of none," it said, this time clear as a bell. "I am missing from my place among those who went before me. The dark hand will try once more to bind me to its will. I must return to my place of rest because my time has passed. It knows where I am and it knows how to find me. You must move swiftly."
Mom nodded firmly and shifted her eyes to the middle of the spectral mass.
"Then it falls upon me to send you to your place of rest," she said, taking a deep breath. "Spirit of John Stearne, by my will I command you return to thy place of rest and blessed be!"
The spectral vapour began to swirl inside the center of the circle. It spun faster and faster, kicking up tiny dust devils until it formed a thin funnel cloud that twisted and stretched with bewildering speed. There was an arc of lightning followed by a deafening pop that I could feel in my fillings. I gave my head a quick shake and saw that all there was left of John Stearne's spirit was a small scorch mark on the floor and three or four thin tendrils of smoke drifting into the air. The shed was silent for about five seconds and that's when things became very bad, very quickly.
"I know your name!" blasted a disembodied voice that shook the walls. The shed door flew off its hinges and sailed through the air, breaching the protective circle. It exploded on contact, sending splinters and shards of wood across the cold cement floor. The air crackled as a series of blinding flashes sent a wave of energy out in all directions, and then everything went slow motion for a moment. I watched in horror as my mother drifted through the air, landing flat on her back. Marcus was swept off the floor, spinning end over end until he crashed into the wall. I landed in a heap and felt every ounce of air in my lungs sail out of my mouth.
It was over as quickly as it began.
"Julie," Mom called out. "Are you alright?"
I choked for air and nodded. "Yeah, Mom. You guys okay?"
She pursed her lips tightly and blinked a few times. She shifted her gaze to the debris strewn all over the floor, then slowly raised herself up to a sitting position. "John Stearne wasn't wrong about whoever it was pulled it from the hereafter," she said grimly. "And the anger in that voice, Julie – I could feel its rage. You opened a huge can of worms when you got that spirit out of Mrs Gilbert's house. This was no isolated incident."
I clutched my amulet tightly in case whatever attacked us felt like taking another swipe at the shed. "It said it knows either your name or mine. How is that possible? We're just a couple of low-profile witches. All I did was help out a little old lady."
"That's what worries me," my mother said. "Whoever it is can attack either of us without any warning at all. Dammit, how is this possible? I took every precaution!"
"I gotta get some body armour or something," Marcus groaned as he got back to his feet. "Two attacks in less than an hour, this is nuts."
I bit my lip and glanced at the circle. "It's a set-up, there's no other explanation. This was aimed at us from the very start."
Mom got up and padded over to the doorway. "Odd that my sentinels didn't prevent the door from flying off its hinges," she muttered as she brushed her fingers across the engravings. "I can still feel a faint trace of someone's magical signature, it's strangely familiar somehow."
I cocked a wary eyebrow and looked hard at her for a moment. "Strangely familiar in what way?
"
She deliberately avoided my gaze and said, "Oh, it's nothing. Just some residual magic that I can't quite put my finger on."
"Maybe the door was the counter-spell," said Marcus as he grabbed a broom and began sweeping up the wood splinters.
I spun around and stared at him. "What do you mean?"
"Just maybe it's possible whoever dragged that spirit into the world of the living had enough skill to turn the power of those protective spells against you. Sort of like a shaped explosive charge but with magic, you know?"
"You could be right, Marcus," said Mom. "Look at the hinges, they're bent downward, like something was pushing against them."
I ran my hand over one of the hinges and chewed my lip for a moment. Protective sentinels are designed to direct their magical energy away from a building, not into it. They're also designed to function when someone tries to breach a magical threshold; in the case of the door, someone would have to turn the doorknob for the magic to kick in. I did a quick scan of the yard and noticed that nothing looked out of place, so I held out my right hand and shut my eyes, hoping to detect the smallest ripple of foreign magical energy, but everything felt as it should. It was clear that whoever or whatever was behind the smashed door and the assault on my mother wanted that spirit badly and meant to do harm to anyone who got in its way.
"I don't know whose voice that was and I can't detect any malicious energy," I said firmly. This was something personal, Mom, what we need to do is figure out why."
She folded her arms across her chest and looked around the shed at what was left of the door. "We don't have to do anything, kiddo, because you have exams to study for. As for me, I'm going to be out a couple of hundred bucks to get a new door and that means we can't go shopping next weekend like we planned. Sorry, sweetheart, but Home Depot beckons."
Well that sucked.
Not only did someone use magic to attack us, now they were preventing me from hitting up the outlet mall for a new bag.
Heads were going to roll.
Chapter 5
Someone attacked a little old lady, my best friend and my home in less than an hour – someone with an intimate knowledge of magic and enough power that they could rip the soul of a deceased human being from the hereafter and bind that soul to their will. They knew either my mother's name or mine, and I had no idea who they were or what their motive might be.
Conspiracies suck monkey butt.
Mom had been gone for less than fifteen minutes when a thought occurred to me as to how we might learn the source of the poltergeist from Mrs Gilbert's.
"What's the next move?" Marcus asked, as he began collecting broken timber from the blown-out doorway. I grabbed one of the two dozen empty cottage cheese containers Mom uses as starter pots for magical herbs and blew out any dust that lingered inside. I grabbed a small hand broom and a dustpan and then stepped into the magic circle.
"We're going to do some chemistry," I said, as I swept up dirt and scorched teddy bear stuffing.
Marcus's face lit up like a Christmas tree. "Sweet! I'm totally down with that! Want me to run home and get my calorimeter? I've always wanted to measure the amount of heat generated by a spell – it might actually help me identify the specific elements that charge your magic. I mean, assuming there's a molecular catalyst somehow."
I carefully dumped the contents of the dustpan into the cottage cheese container. "No offence, Marcus, but this kind of chemistry would probably wreck your calobobiter thingy."
"Calorimeter," he sighed. "What are you planning to do anyway?"
"Just a hunch that tells me we might be able to trace the origin of the spirit we'd trapped in the teddy bear. With any luck, it might give us a clue about who attacked us," I said, heading out of the shed. "Follow me."
Within minutes we were downstairs in the study, a spare bedroom that doubles as a makeshift lab for anyone who deals in the business of magic.
Each of the walls has custom-built utility shelves that stretch from floor to ceiling and on each shelf there is everything from jars containing herbs or strange liquids sealed with wax paper to old Chinese food containers filled with oddly-named items like "Milk of Dill Root" or "Crow's Toe". There's a long worktable that stretches down the middle of the room and it's covered with piles of dusty spiral notebooks, beakers, flasks and, of course, candles; lots and lots of candles.
I placed the cottage cheese container on the table as Marcus sat down on a stool and gave me a disapproving look that told me precisely what he was thinking.
"You're totally setting yourself up to get a blast of shit from your mom, Julie," he warned. "If she finds out that you've decided to play supernatural detective, she'll lose it."
"We were attacked," I said firmly. "And did you see how Mom got all secretive back in the shed? She has a hunch what this is about and I know her, Marcus. She'll clam the heck up if I push her on it."
"Maybe there's a reason for it," he said. "I think you should back off."
I waved a hand. "I know my limitations. I'm just going to try and figure a few things out on my own, okay? That's my shelving unit over there with all my own spell ingredients. Do me a favour and see if you can find a small bottle labelled "distilled water". You'll also see a spool of white thread and a small box with some birthstones in it. Would you bring them over here?"
Marcus nodded and started searching through the cluttered shelving unit while I pulled my hair back into a tight ponytail. I scooped a couple of teaspoons of "poltergunk" out of the cottage cheese container and dumped it in a cold marble bowl.
"Here," said Marcus, dropping the items on the worktable. "Julie, just promise me that nothing will happen like what happened in the shed today, okay?"
"You have my word," I said, as I unscrewed the cap from the bottle of distilled water. "There won't be a problem; I'm just going to invoke a small tracking spell. Oh, one last thing… we need a map of the city. Would you be so kind as to use the computer in the den and print one off from Google Maps?"
"Alright," he said, as he headed toward the stairs. "You know, I seriously need to get a life. I'm not built for getting my butt handed to me by poltergeists or warlocks or whatever this is."
"You have a life!" I shouted. "Besides, supernatural sleuthing with me has to be way more interesting than chasing all the brain-dead hot chicks at school like most guys do, right?"
I pulled a small rough opal out of the box of birthstones and snapped off a length of white thread. I could hear the printer clunking away upstairs as I tied the opal to one end of the thread and laid it out beside the bowl. Moments later Marcus padded down the steps. He waved the map at me and threw me an awkward smile.
"Crescent Ridge High's population of stunning females are boring and entirely predictable," he said. "I prefer girls with above-average intelligence – that's why I hang with you. The fact that you're about a thousand kinds of beautiful is a bonus."
I snorted. "Yeah, that's me, a Maxim cover model waiting to happen."
There was silence for about ten seconds as I waited for one of Marcus's trademark barbs about how bimbo reality TV stars and celebrity sex tapes aren't anything more than cheap PR stunts, but there was nothing. I shifted my gaze from the marble bowl and stared at Marcus. I continued staring for a very long moment because I honestly didn't know how to respond to his compliment. Did someone put him up to it? I narrowed my eyes as I studied his face and Marcus's thin smile immediately dissolved. He avoided my gaze, choosing instead to look down at the floor.
"Did Marla Lavik pay you to say that, because if so you can inform her I'm going to tell everyone at school that she wears granny panties!" I said sourly.
"No. Whatever… it doesn't matter," he replied, his face turning red.
Damn. He was dead serious.
I wanted to say something but I was struck dumb; partly out of the shock of anyone thinking I was actually beautiful, but mostly because I'd never known Marcus to be so candid about his feelings before. I mean, we're best
friends for crying out loud! I just stood there with my mouth wide open and then I said, "Listen, Marcus, I…"
"Never mind," he interrupted. "Let's just get back to the spell."
"Good idea," I said, clearing my throat and returning to the worktable. I tried as hard as I could to put what had just happened out of my mind. The only problem was that my brain wasn't about to let that happen.
Marcus thought I was beautiful? He couldn't seriously have feelings for me, could he? I mean, he's seen me barfing all over the place when I decided it was time for me to figure out why every adult in the Western Hemisphere thinks Bailey's Irish Cream is so awesome. He even held my head over the toilet while I begged God, my mother and all known religious deities for forgiveness in between hurls. He later deleted a stupid video I'd posted on YouTube where I was drunkenly belting out the world's most terrible version of Pink's So What into a wooden spoon. How could he seriously think I was beautiful after that?
Poltergeeks Page 3
