by Wither
“Wendy?”
“I’m—okay, I think,” Wendy said. “He just surprised me…. He looked like someone, somebody I’ve seen before.”
“Where?”
“In one of my dreams,” Wendy said. “A frightening man.”
“So you are still having these strange dreams,” Alissa said with a clear hint of accusation. Wendy had made the mistake of telling Alissa that she hadn’t had the dreams anymore in the past several days. No sense complaining about it if Alissa couldn’t help her do anything about it.
“Now and then,” Wendy said. “I’m trying to not let them bother me.”
“Obviously they are bothering you,” Alissa said. “You need to relax. You need to remove the stress points from your life.”
Wendy told Alissa that she’d had rights with both Frankie and Alex, without going into the specific circumstances of the ritual.
“Definitely stress points,” Alissa said. “You need to resolve these issues to remove the stress from your life.”
“I thought they were my friends,” Wendy said, “but they think I’m a freak, just like everyone else. Who needs them?”
“I’m guessing you do, Gwendolyn,” Alissa said. Wendy started to respond, but Alissa held up her hand. “Listen to me for a minute. People you let close to you, inside your social circle, if you will, are going to get curious about your lifestyle. They’re bound to get curious! You have to make allowances for that.”
“I know that, but-”
“If you are holding them up to normal, average standards of curiosity, they are going to let you down,” Alissa said. “I bet they’re not even sure how to phrase the first question about what you do.”
“Frankie asks plenty of questions—”
“But I bet she’s not even aware of how seriously you take this stuff. To her, it probably seems like an interesting lark, a different way to be mysterious. She doesn’t see your attempts to connect to nature, to commune with nature and the elements. In a way, both of them probably can’t see beyond the cartoons cluttering this town or the darker mysteries surrounding witchcraft.”
“So what am I supposed to do about it?”
Alissa smiled wryly “You have two choices. You can be alone for the rest of your life and mope. Or, you can talk to them, explain what it all means to you. How else will they ever understand?”
Grudgingly, Wendy began to see the wisdom of Alissa’s assessment. Maybe it wasn’t fair of her to judge them by the usual standards. Maybe it was up to her to cut them some slack. She thought it over while she swept the remains of the dragon crystal into a dustbin—she promised to reimburse Alissa in weekly installments out of her pay each week for the next month. By the time she had the floor completely clean, she had decided to give Frankie a call to apologize. As she reached for the telephone it rang beneath her hand. “Crystal Path,” Wendy said into the receiver.
“Perhaps you can help me,” said an old woman’s voice. “I need the ingredients for a spell.”
“A spell?” Wendy asked, skeptically. Crank calls were all too common this time of year. A fake voice?
“Yes,” the old woman said, “a forgiveness spell. It seems I misjudged a situation involving two young lovers…”
“Frankie?” Wendy asked, smiling.
“The name is Frances, my dear,” the old woman’s voice said. “Frances Jane Lenard.”
“Frankie!” Wendy exclaimed. “I’m glad you called.”
“You are?” Normal, squeaky Frankie voice now. “Why?”
Wendy laughed. “Because I’ve been a stubborn jackass.”
“…But you’re all better now?”
“I’m okay,” Wendy said, feeling a weight lifting from her back, “better than fine.”
“You got laid?”
Laughing. “No!”
“Well, you sound like you just had some good sex, woman. Speaking of sex, are you also fine with Mr. Dunkirk.”
“Yes! No! I mean, I haven’t called him yet.”
“Well, you should…call him, I mean,” Frankie said. “Guys who wear sunglasses and Hawaiian shirts really shouldn’t mope.”
“I have his dorm number,” Wendy said. “I can try him there.”
“Wanna split a pizza later? During your break? I have this intense mozzarella craving…”
“Okay—bring a pizza, in an hour,” Wendy said, laughing.
“Make it a large,” Alissa said, returning from the back room again. “No meat toppings.”
“Hold the meat,” Wendy said into the phone, then to Alissa, “What about cheese? I thought you were becoming a vegan?”
“I haven’t made the total commitment yet,” Alissa said. “But I’m leaning…”
Wendy spoke into the receiver, “Make that one large, leaning tower of pizza.”
“Oh, you are shameless,” Alissa chuckled. “I should dock your pay for that pun.”
“Bye, Frankie. See you in sixty,” Wendy said, hung up the telephone, then dialed Alexis dorm number. It rang nine times, and she was about to hang up, when the ringing stopped. After a moment, AWs sleepy voice said “Hello” over the receiver. “Alex? It’s Wendy.”
Immediately he seemed more alert, but still tentative. “Wendy, hi! Good to hear your voice again. I was just dozing. Been a long day. Feel like I stepped in another cow.”
“Stepped in what?”
“Never did get to tell you about the cow, did I?”
“Maybe later,” Wendy said. Maybe hed been drinking. “I just wanted to find out if you’re still…curious.”
“Curious? Yes, I am… Why?”
“I have some things I want to show you.”
A white Jetta pulled off onto the shoulder of Route 33, and Sheriff Bill Nottingham looked up from his grim task of securing off a corner of a weedy utility ditch with police do not cross tape. Eric Beauregard, a local freelancer who pinch-hit as a crime scene photographer on those rare occasions Windale had a scene worth documenting, climbed out of the car with a cardboard carryall from the Witches’ Brewhouse on Main.
“Got you a mochachino and an everything bagel,” Beauregard said, setting the carryall on the hood of his car and walking over toward the ditch, at the bottom of which lay a greasy heap that not so very long ago had been a human being. Or, more accurately, part of one. There wasn’t much left to identify the victim, which made looking at the mess—pan of a torso, according to the medical examiner—that much easier for those who had to deal with it. Missing head, hands, limbs and any other distinguishing characteristics, it had been dehumanized to the point of roadkill.
Except that this roadkill had had a name at some point within the last six to twelve hours.
Determining that name was the sheriffs business, and there were beginning to be several candidates. This morning he’d arrived at his office to find a waiting room of concerned family members wanting to file missing persons reports.
First there was Lottie Brown reporting her husband, Larry, missing. An electrician by trade, Larry had last been seen working late into the night stringing lights along Main in anticipation of the King Frost parade. Then there was Jessie Burke, a pretty junior at Danfield, concerned that her roommate, Tina, hadn’t come home after spending the evening cramming for a poly-sci exam at the library. And there was seventy-something-year-old Florence Reader, whose equally elderly “gentleman friend” George had never returned from one of his late-night insomniac strolls with their Boston terrier, J. Edgar. (Though Florence had found the dog sleeping peacefully on the front stoop that morning—still wearing its leash.)
By Windale’s sleepy standards, it was a veritable pandemic of disappearances. Compound that with the earlier drowning-death of Jack Carter, his girlfriend’s talk of monsters, and the rash of vandalism, and the sheriff was beginning to feel a sick little knot of dread just below his breastbone. What the fuck was happening to his town“?
“Any idea who it is?” Eric Beauregard asked, beginning to snap photos from varying angles.
“No idea,” the sheriff said. “Though I can tell you who I wish it was…” Personally, he hoped it was Art Leeson, the fugitive he’d spent every waking hour of the last three days tracking. He had a hunch, though, that he wouldn’t be so lucky to have that manhunt end here so easily, in a drainage ditch beside an old snow route.
The sheriff’s instincts were serving him well: the human remains did not belong to Art Leeson…or for that matter, Larry Brown, Tina Lewis, or George Gerdts. In fact they belonged to a drifter, but this piece of information would never be determined, and Christopher Perry would find himself interred eternally and eventually forgotten within a storage drawer at the Essex County medical examiner’s office.
Wendy had fallen asleep sitting up in bed, a sure sign of her general fatigue. Her teeth were chattering and her skin was covered with goose flesh. Why am I so cold? she wondered. Her forehead was hot and damp.
It took a few moments for the fog of sleep to lift before she realized that her dark fingernails had clawed through her biology workbook, shredding lessons for the rest of the semester along with some of her blankets. Remnants of chapter summaries were scattered on her bed like confetti. Then she saw the blood and began clearing away the paper and shredded cloth to reveal the three slices she’d gouged in her thigh. That’s when she realized her leg wasn’t just stiff from sleeping in an awkward position, it ached from the wound.
She hobbled to the bathroom, poured a palmful of hydrogen peroxide over the cuts, then taped a gauze bandage the size of a coaster tight against her thigh. Splashed water in her face, grimaced at the few gray hairs that had popped up recently in her dark hair. Evidence of lack of sleep?
Yet she had fallen asleep—if only for a few minutes—and without preparing for dream magic: no valerian, no moonstone or amethyst. (Before she fell asleep that night, she’d have to remember to put on that old pair of leather driving gloves she had in the garage, to sheath her “claws.”) This dream had been of the simple “being chased” variety, except the thing chasing her was some sort of dark, looming bogeyman, and it had the same hideous leathery face she had seen briefly in her mirror and all over Jensen Hoyt’s dorm walls. She vaguely recalled trying to scrabble over a stone fence to escape, which was probably when her hands and her fingernails had lashed out. But this dream had affected her differently, completely draining her. Maybe because she was unprepared? Her sliced thigh alone was enough reason not to fall asleep again without the preparations.
A glance at her clock radio told her she was running late for her two afternoon classes, after which she’d have time to visit Professor Glazer during her posted office hours.
Her thigh wound had stopped throbbing in time to her heartbeat midway through her second and last class of the afternoon, so Wendy decided to skip the elevator ride and climb the stairs to the fourth floor of Pearson on principle alone. In addition to the new gray hairs she’d found before going to her afternoon classes, the circles under her eyes were well on their way to becoming bags. She had even borrowed some of her mother’s makeup and expertise to make her eyes appear a little less frightful, enduring her mother’s clucks of disapproval on how she was wasting her youth.
Despite a slight pause on the third-floor landing, Wendy finally made it to fourth-floor Pearson. A little breathless, she admitted to herself, and a little wobbly in the pins, but here all the same. Fourth floor was where most of the liberal arts profs had their offices. Wendy was looking for room 424.
She was ticking off the room numbers, only peripherally aware of the man mopping the floor until he called out to her, “Be careful!”
Startled, she turned and looked back at him. “What?”
“The floor,” he said, pointing, “it’s still wet down there.”
“Oh, the floor,” she said, feeling idiotic. “Thanks. I’ll watch my step.”
He probably thought she was being a wiseass, but lately concentrating on two things at once required more focus than she could muster. Checking door numbers and watching her step? She might as well attempt to walk and chew gum at the same time. Absurd, Wendy thought, then giggled to herself. I am becoming frighteningly delirious all too easily these days.
She found the door to 424 open but knocked lightly on the doorframe nonetheless. No answer. She poked her head in. Three small offices in the room, with name plates beside the doors: Theresa Renzetti and Anthony J. Zambino flanked Professor Glazer’s middle office. Wendy stepped into the outer office/waiting area, which featured two chairs and a narrow table cluttered with all sorts of cautionary pamphlets and a couple academic journals. The doors to the Renzetti and Zambino offices were closed and, based on the dark vertical panels of frosted glass beside them, unoccupied as well. Professor Glazer’s door was open, and she was sitting at her desk, elbow planted on an uneven pile of blue books, her chin resting in the curled palm of her hand. Wendy thought she might have dozed off and worried that her prof might fall into another seizure. “Professor Glazer?” Wendy called softly.
Karen startled slightly, making Wendy believe she really had fallen into a light sleep. She looked up, and her eyes seemed a little worn around the edges as well, from stress or lack of sleep. “Hi,” Professor Glazer said. “Sorry—I must’ve dozed off. Come in. What can I do for you?”
“Nothing, actually,” Wendy said, and saw the look of confusion on Professor Glazer’s face. “I brought you something…”
She opened her purse and took out a small linen pouch, which rustled when she handled it and resembled a dollhouse pillow. It had a little cloth strap dangling from it. “I was going to give it to you after class the other day, but I chickened out.” She found herself inexplicably nervous. “You may have heard some things about me. That I dabble in white magic.”
“I’ve heard rumors,” Professor Glazer said diplomatically.
“I bet. Anyway, this is a…charm I made for your baby-to-be … and for you. It’s mostly parsley, sage, and rosemary with a turquoise stone for good luck. The seeds and leaves are supposed to bring beauty, health, vitality…” As she began to run down the list of attributes she saw Professor Glazer’s eyes drift off somewhere far away, and judging by the tears that began to well up, it wasn’t a very nice place.
Wendy stopped abruptly and reached to put a hand on Karen’s shoulder. “Are you okay?”
Karen’s eyes were filled with sadness. “No,” she said quietly. “No, I’m not.”
Wendy hesitated, unsure of whether or not she was being invited to intrude further into personal terrain. She decided to take a chance.
“Is it the baby?”
Karen nodded, and said with finality: “I’m losing her.”
Wendy felt her professor’s words like a sudden sharp blow to the chest She felt something catch within her own throat in sympathy.
Karen looked embarrassed, began searching her desk for tissues. “I’m sorry, I’m sure you didn’t come here to listen to me—”
“It’s okay. Realty”
Karen found a crumpled packet of Kleenex and blew her nose loudly. “Fifteen years I’ve been teaching, and I’ve never broken down in front of a student.” She announced it more as a criticism than an explanation. “I’ve just been such a wreck lately. I can’t eat without getting sick, can’t sleep without having nightmares—-”
Wendy fixed on Karen’s last words. “Nightmares?”
And despite a long-held personal belief that teachers should maintain a professional distance from their students, Karen found herself confessing to Wendy about her dreams of Rebecca Cole…
Wendy listened without expression, nodding on occasion as Karen described the lucid tour of colonial Windale, the leering gaze of Jonah Cooke, the epileptic seizure…. And Wither. As she listened, she tried not to let her face reveal the sinking feeling blooming like a black flower in her stomach. But despite her best efforts at composure, when Karen finished, Wendy was reeling.
“Wendy, what’s wrong? I’m sorry, I know it’s not fair to vent my prob
lems on you”
“No,” Wendy said sharply. “I deserve this.” I deserve to know what I’ve set loose, she thought, though she couldn’t bring herself to admit this aloud to Karen. She stood suddenly, and took her professor’s hand in her own.
“I’m going to stop this, Karen,” she said. “I’m going to stop your nightmares.” Our nightmares…
She gave Karen’s hand a squeeze and hoped she took some little bit of strength from Wendy’s grasp. She hoped, too, that she didn’t sound as frightened as she felt inside as she made the promise.
It had to stop. Whatever plague of nightmares she’d set loose during that ceremony in the woods had to be put back into the Pandora’s box from which they’d come. Before they wreaked any more havoc. Before they snatched any more innocents like Jack Carter. Before they invaded any more dreams…
Before they sapped Wendy’s remaining strength and she was no longer able to fight them. But how do you reseal Pandora’s box? How do you trick the vicious genie back into his bottle?
Still holding Karen’s hand, Wendy looked out the window of the office at the gathering night. God only knew what was waiting out there for her, or what it wanted with this poor pregnant woman. But Wendy was going to find out.
She had an idea, but it would require Alexis complete understanding … and his help.
Karen wore the strange charm Wendy had given her close to her heart throughout the afternoon’s blur of colorless events, slipped into an inner pocket of her cardigan like a secret valentine. Periodically she would take out the charm and study it, holding the fragrant little pouch to her nose. Like the tea-soaked madeleine that released the floodgates of nostalgia in Proust’s masterwork, “Remembrance of Things Past (a novel Karen team taught with Deb Schaeffer, from the Modern Languages Department), the witch charm’s scent of sage and rosemary conjured up for Karen a series of warm memories: of the day she first told Paul she was pregnant; of an afternoon spent picking wallpaper for the nursery; of the evening shed first felt the baby kick. The charm, and the memories it evoked, seemed to break something resistant within her, some tiny seal with which she’d been holding grief at bay. All throughout this horrible week she’d tried to safeguard her heart by avoiding these memories of happier times, knowing that they would be corrosive in their undiluted purity. But she was too tired now to resist any longer; Wendy’s charm—for better or worse—had convinced her of that. When she pulled into her garage she closed her eyes and listened to the ticking of her cooling engine, finally allowing the grief to flood the inner recesses shed fought to preserve.
