“Who eats ice cream this late?” Tone asked, then he chuckled. “Oh, that’s right. I do.”
“Have you had their ice cream? It’s, like, the best ice cream I’ve ever had,” Felah said.
“No, I haven’t,” Tone said, smiling. “Maybe we could have a cone or two…”
“Or ten,” Felah muttered under her breath.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“Let’s go,” Tone said, grumbling.
Tone shifted into drive and began to pull back out onto the street when the black shape crossed the view of their windshield. He slammed on the brakes, sending them forward, Felah almost bashing her head in on the dashboard.
“There! Did you see that?” Tone shouted.
Felah was rubbing her head. A knot had begun to form. Great, she thought, sarcastically just before school pictures. Mom’s gonna kill me. Then she shook her head. Man, I’m losing it. I've been out of school for years.
“Yeah, yeah, I saw it,” she affirmed.
“It went around the house.”
“Tone, if it’s a bear, we should call the proper authorities. Like bear patrol or something. Ow, God, can you not slam on the brakes next time? I need all my brain cells.”
“Wear your seatbelt.”
“I’m a witch; a witch in the Order of the Silver Griffins, at that. I don’t need to wear my seatbelt.”
Tone chuckled, but there was no humor in it. “Come on, let’s go check it out.”
They both got out of the car. Fear seized Felah’s heart. You can’t fear. You’re a Silver Griffin. You can handle any and everything that comes your way. Still, her hand slipped into her sleeve and pulled the wand hidden there closer to her grip. Bear or not, this is your job, isn’t it? They headed around the back of Ignatius’s house. Not a single light seemed to be on. The streetlight overhead, which was the sole source of illumination, flickered and went out.
Tone stopped and looked at Felah as if to say, ‘let’s go home, leave this one alone.’
Felah shook her head. She may be a rookie, but she wasn’t backing down from darkness. It was her job to investigate illegal uses of magic and, by Oriceran, she was going to do just that.
She walked on.
Tone whispered, “Wait up.”
Felah turned the corner around the house. She had a view of the Apples’ backyard. The grass was wild and overgrown, sunflowers lolled lazily in the wind, and a smattering of quirky toys (probably left by that weird old Ignatius Apple) had been left on the back porch.
“Pig-sty,” Felah muttered.
“There’s nothing. Let’s go,” Tone said.
Felah smiled and started laughing, mostly because she allowed herself to be spooked. Over what? Nothing. “Lonny and Calan aren’t gonna believe it!”
“Huh?”
“That Tone is getting shown up by a rook! I can’t wait to see the look on their faces when I tell them you practically wet your pants over shadows!” Felah slapped Tone on his fleshy back. His face was still pale, but she could feel the heat baking off of him. He was pissed. Perfect.
“I’m not scared!”
“Yeah, you are. You’re practically shaking in your Keds!”
“Stop it, rook!”
Felah waggled her index finger. The weight of the situation and the darkness seemed very far in her head. “Ah-ah. Here, I’ll make you a deal. You stop calling me ‘Rook’ and ‘Rookie’ and ‘Fresh Meat,’ and all those other lame pet names meant to demean me for being new, and I won’t tell anyone about your little…episode.”
Tone’s mouth twisted into a snarl, but he was silent, weighing his options. “No one ever listens to a rookie!” Tone said.
Felah kept smiling at him.
After a moment, he relented. “Fine.” Then with emphasis, “Felah.”
“Ah, I like the sound of that. My own name. How sweet it is coming from your lips—” She stopped abruptly.
“What?” Tone grunted.
Felah looked to her right at the tree line near the back of Ignatius’s yard. She heard a noise there, much like the one a man named Sean had heard in an Ohio forest not many days before. A rustling, then heavy footsteps snapping loose branches.
“Someone’s there,” Felah said. She stood a little straighter and brought her wand from her sleeve. “Show yourself,” she commanded loudly.
They watched the tree line.
Nothing came out.
“Show yourself and we’ll—”
The rustling she had heard came back, this time behind her, coming from the street, and it turned into thunderous footsteps. Before she could turn around, the Arachnid already had Tone in its clutches.
She aimed her wand, which was slick in her sweaty palm, and tried to speak a simple spell of protection, but the words wouldn’t come out.
The creature roared — a terrible sound of metal raking against metal. The stench that radiated off of it was somehow worse than the sound escaping its fanged maw. Tone was not fast enough in conjuring a spell. The spider grappled him with with six arms and ripped him in half. A rain of blood sprinkled Felah’s face, and she took off before it could drench her.
She ran across Ignatius Apple’s yard, where the high grass came up to her waist. She looked over her shoulder. All her magical knowledge disappeared from her mind, replaced with one thing—the most important thing: Survival.
She was nearing the other end of the yard, which ended at the neighbor’s fence. Felah prepared to vault it, her muscles readying for the jump. Something tripped her up. She never saw what it was, but it banged against her toes. Three of them broke. She felt no pain.
“Not good,” she panted. “Not fucking good at all.”
She pulled herself up. The air was still, the night quiet—though Tone’s dying scream would never leave her head. She looked around, but there was no Arachnid. It was gone.
Then the grass began to rustle.
“No,” she wheezed.
The Arachnid came at her on all eight of its appendages, scrabbling. Fast. Faster. Felah...
Fast.
Faster.
Felah screamed.
No one heard her.
She ran up Ignatius’s porch, not understanding why one of her feet felt numb and tingly. The back door was locked.
The Arachnid’s growling revved.
Closer.
Closer.
She made the classic mistake; she looked over her shoulder.
It was gone.
“Get ahold of yourself.” Felah scolded against the door. Tears streamed down her face. She aimed her wand at the door. Breaking and entering by way of magic was a horrid offense, but dying was worse. She said the spell. A burst of light escaped her wand, aimed at the doorknob. It exploded against the metal, charring it and denting the frame.
Then the roar came.
Slick, hairy legs wrapped around her throat. The wand missed the knob and hit the door instead, creating a charred divot.
Felah tried to scream, but she couldn’t. The legs squeezed tighter and tighter. The night got blacker and blacker.
No one ever listened to a rookie.
Malakai did not crave her blood like the others of his kind. A dead Arachnid had no bodily needs. He only wanted her wand.
He picked it up and wiped the crimson from it on his chest.
With the wand, he could cast his spell. He could change.
Chapter Eight
Maria pedaled to the only place she thought her grandfather could be at that hour. Salem’s Ice Cream Shop.
Gramps spent a lot of his time there. Maria didn’t know why. She pictured him eating ice cream in the throes of another dreadful Ohio winter, and she laughed.
“Should I call the cops?” she asked Sherlock, who was sitting in the basket connected to the handlebars, his mouth open, tongue and ears flapping. Asking a dog for advice, how wonderful, she thought.
No, if you call the cops, they will be killed. You saw what those things are capable o
f.
Maria nodded. She didn’t want any blood on her hands. But what if it wasn’t a giant walking spider, but a burglar instead? Or even someone in need of help? The cops could surely handle it, couldn’t they?
No, Sherlock said, as if he was reading her mind. We have to get to your grandfather before Malakai does. Pedal faster, Maria! Pedal for your life.
“I’m trying, I’m trying,” Maria said, out of breath. She spoke quietly. “We really oughta cut back on the Purina.”
Are you insinuating that I’m fat? Sherlock asked.
“Let’s just say your glory days are over.”
Maria turned down West Avenue. The streets were empty. She stuck close to the shadows on the sidewalk out of fear the giant spider would see her.
They can probably see in the dark, she thought. They are creatures of the night, aren’t they? At least, on Earth they are.
Still, she didn’t risk it.
When she arrived at Salem’s, seeing the sign wasn’t lit up, her heart sank.
“He’s not here,” Maria said.
I can smell him, Sherlock answered in her head. I smell the cough drops and those terrible vitamins he takes. Keep going.
Maria pedaled.
As she got closer, she was able to make out a faint light in the backroom of the ice cream shop.
The smell is stronger now, Sherlock said.
Maria parked her bike around the back and took Sherlock out of the basket. With the other hand, she cradled the music box to her chest.
“I don’t have a leash, but you’re not going to run away on me, are you, Sherlock? I don’t have time to put up ‘LOST DOG’ posters all over town.”
Maria, I think it’s fair to say my running days are well behind me.
Sherlock walked to the back door. Maria tried to peer in through the window, but the inside was hazy with smoke. Another odd image popped into her mind: her grandfather smoking a joint with a bunch of his friends, reminiscing about the good old days.
Just as she raised her hand to knock, the door opened. Standing in the threshold was Salem Crumpet, manager and owner of Salem’s Ice Cream.
“Oh, howdy, Maria, wasn’t expecting you,” Salem said.
She poked her head in, eyes trying to cut through the smoke. Not marijuana but tobacco smoke coming from old-time Hobbit pipes.
“Is that the pizza guy? If it’s Gary, don’t tip the bastard!” someone said.
“Gramps?” Maria said.
“Maria?”
Sherlock barked.
“Sherlock? What in Oriceran is going on here?” Gramps demanded.
Maria shimmied past Salem and bounded toward her grandfather. She hugged him. “Oh, it was so scary,” she said. “You’re never going to believe what happened to me.”
“Oh, I don’t think I’ll have a hard time believing,” Gramps said. They parted. “Now, speak, child. Tell us what is wrong.”
“Boy troubles?” Salem asked. “If it’s boy troubles, we’ve been known to get rowdy from time to time, and we won’t hesitate to defend your honor, Maria.”
Maria shook her head, smiling. It felt good to have people watching your back.
“No, not boy troubles. Well…”
“School? Job? You tell us,” Gramps said, “and we’ll fix it. You have my word.”
“It’s Oriceran. The giant spider from the Dark Forest. His name is Malakai, and the dead boy named Duke visited me, and I can somehow talk to Sherlock. Not to mention blowing up the clown head at Downview while we were putt-putting—”
“Slow down, child,” Gramps said. He took her hand. “Did you say ‘Malakai’?”
Maria nodded, putting the music box in the middle of the table. The Muffler twins gasped, seemingly coming out of nowhere and spooking Maria.
Gramps patted the empty seat next to them.
“Start from the beginning,” he urged.
Maria did.
“But that’s impossible,” Salem said.
An old woman next to him named Agnes Crenshaw shook her head. “Nothing is impossible these days, my dear. I believe the child speaks true.”
Gramps got up and hugged Maria. “My little girl is all grown up. She’s a witch now.” He wiped a gleam of tears from his eyes.
Maria pushed him away. “Oh, Gramps, not in front—Wait, did you say witch?”
He nodded.
There was five of them in total and now they all nodded, too. “So I didn’t hallucinate any of that stuff? It…it was all real?”
Salem nodded. Agnes nodded. Gramps nodded. And the Muffler twins nodded as well.
“I saw you,” Maria said to Gramps. “I saw you when you were younger. You wore a military uniform with armor, and you fought a giant spider-man. How the hell is that not a hallucination?”
“There’s much you don’t know about Ignatius,” Salem said. “He was Dominion’s bravest warrior. When the conflict between the village and the Arachnids got heated and lesser men backed down, Ignatius refused.”
Maria found herself smiling, proud of her grandfather.
“Of course, now he’s nothing but an old fart,” Salem added. The table broke up in laughter and Gramps gave Salem the finger.
Sherlock barked, but inside Maria’s head, it sounded like a chuckle.
“This is too weird,” she said, shaking her head.
Gramps put up his hand and the rest of the group quieted. He had a certain magnitude that seemed to ooze out of him now, one Maria never noticed before.
“I may have been a great warrior, but I was a fool. It was my idea to hide the village in the world in between. I’d forced Zimmy Ba, the one you know as the Queen Witch, to hide them, and because of that, we lost twice that day.”
Salem patted Gramps’s back.
“It’s okay, Ig, it’s okay. If what your granddaughter speaks is true, then there’s hope yet.”
“Yes, and hope is a good thing no matter what planet you’re on. Oriceran or Earth,” Agnes added.
Maria’s gaze shifted to the music box. She reached out and opened it. Everyone’s eyes flicked to the ornately decorated wooden surface. Even Sherlock stood on two legs, resting his front paws on the card table to get a better look.
The sweet melody rang out in the chilly air of the backroom at Salem’s.
“Ah, that does bring me back,” Fredrick Muffler said.
“Me, too,” said his twin sister, Ginny.
When the music stopped, everyone seemed relaxed, including Maria.
“Tell me more,” she said.
The senior citizen ice cream brigade did.
“ ‘Apple’?” Maria said. “You couldn’t have picked a more common last name? Really anything besides ‘Apple’. Do you know how much I’ve been made fun of because of that last name?”
“When the portal threw me and the music box out onto the street in the middle of broad daylight, a cop came up and asked me what the hell I was doing in the middle of the street dressed like Sir Lancelot, and why I had a baby in my arms; I panicked.”
“Ha!” Salem said. “ ‘Panicked’. The old geezer known as ‘the Calm Storm’ panicked. I love this story.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Gramps said. “Laugh it up.” He gave him the Oriceran equivalent to flipping the bird— he flared his thumbs out to the side while the rest of his fingers were in a fist.
He continued. “A young woman was on the street corner. She sat behind a cart full of fresh apples, selling them for a very reasonable price. I glanced at it with the corner of my eye after the cop asked me for my identification, and came up with that last name because it seemed very reasonable as well. I’d said I left my identification in my regular clothes. The cop said if he saw me in the street again, acting like a jackass and holding up traffic, he’d write me up a fat ticket and call child services. Then, he said Halloween ain’t for a few months. Naturally, the last name stuck as I got my new life in order.”
“But ‘Apple’? C’mon, Gramps.”
At least it’s not as
bad as ‘Sherlock,’ the dog said.
Maria glared at him. “Thought you liked that name.”
It’s a little too…cliché. I’ve always wanted something more badass, like ‘Killer’ or ‘Macho’.
“But you’re not badass. You don’t even bark at squirrels anymore. You just sniff the dead ones, and let the cars and power lines do the dirty work for you.”
That’s beside the point.
Maria rolled her eyes, and then looked around the table. No one seemed to have paid any mind to her having a conversation with her dog. Yeah, too weird, she thought.
“I didn’t see you with a baby when Duke showed me what happened,” Maria said, wanting to get back to the story. She felt safe in the ice cream shop, surrounded by people who understood.
“That was because the first time I portaled out of the throne room, I’d gone back to Zimmy’s hideout.”
“The Queen Witch,” Maria said.
Gramps nodded.
“May she rest in peace,” the Muffler twins said at the same time.
“What did you find?” Maria asked.
Gramps lowered his head, but a smile came across his face. I found…you.”
“Me!?” Maria said. “What do you mean?”
“The Arachnids had found the Queen Witch’s hideout. She was powerful, but no being is a match for hordes of Arachnids—especially Arachnids whose very blood runs as dark as the magic they use. She sacrificed herself to save a child, the last infant in our village—my granddaughter. When I’d gotten to the cave and I saw the light, that glowing blue orb of light, I rushed toward it. Luckily for me, she’d killed all the Arachnids before she herself passed on.”
“So when Duke went through, you were portaling to the Queen Witch’s hideout?” Maria asked.
Gramps nodded. “Yes. I had the music box, and only she could access the world in between with it. She was my daughter, I had to save her. But I was too late, and there you were, protected by her spell, in a bubble of pale blue light, smiling with no teeth as if nothing happened. I left the cave, clutching you to my chest. The smoke was thick, but I could still see the fires burning all over the village. I could see the Arachnids scouring the land, ruining everything. I could see that we had lost, and that I had no choice but to leave.”
Midwest Magic Chronicles Boxed Set Page 8
