by Wither
“Where do you get all this stuff?”
“Most of it at the place where I work, a small store in a strip of shops on Theurgy Avenue. It’s no Mall of America, I bet,” she said. He smiled at her Minneapolis reference. “Some stuff I find on my own. Whatever I buy, I have to consecrate before I use.” She looked through her collection of stones, hidden away in their pouches. She dumped one into her palm. “Here’s a tektite stone, used for banishings. And here’s a rutilated quartz,” she said, showing him a clear stone with streaks like white thread running through it, “for creativity”
“Garnet,” he said, pointing to a stenciled pouch. “What’s that for?”
She dumped the deep red stone from its stenciled pouch. “To open yourself to life’s pleasures and, um, sex.”
“I’ll just keep this,” he said, pretending to pocket the garnet. Wendy laughed.
“Some of the herbs and flowers have properties that duplicate the stones,” she said. “Just like rose quartz, parsley, and sage are used for health and healing” She picked up another lettered linen bag. “Thyme leaves in your bathwater give you courage and strength-good for an athlete. And here, witch hazel leaves make you charming and irresistible.”
“You must have used those,” Alex said, looking right at her.
To avoid the intensity of his stare, she looked again at her collection. “Let’s see, a sprig of rosemary in an infant’s room will make him or her safe and happy.”
“And this?” he asked, pointing to another pouch, “foxglove?”
“Foxglove leaves,” she said, trying to suppress a smile. “You have an uncanny knack for picking out certain varieties.” She cleared her throat. “Keep powdered foxglove leaves in a box at your bedside to open your life to strong sexual love.”
Alex raised his hands, palms up. “I may have a natural gift for picking them out,” he said, “but you’re the one who has them in her collection.”
She slapped at his hand, laughing. They stared at each other for a moment, neither looking away. Finally, Wendy reached back on the bottom shelf. “This is my prize.” She withdrew an object wrapped in layers of cloth and laid it in Alex’s hands before unwrapping it. “Mandrake root,” she said. “A strong, all-purpose charm. A complete one like this—with the entire man shape—is considered especially powerful” She carefully put it away again. “And that concludes our tour:”
“I hope I’m not acting like a tourist,” Alex said.
“Not at all,” Wendy said. “I hope you understand me better now.” God, I hope that didn’t sound condescending. “I mean—”
“Wendy, I know what you mean,” he said, “I was the one who acted like some perverted jackass…”
She touched her fingertips to his lips. “Forgotten,” she said. “Except for one minor detail.”
“A minor detail?” he asked, no doubt wondering at his penance.
“I need you to do something for me…to help me with something. If you really do understand all this now, it shouldn’t be that big a deal” Yeah, right! she thought. Maybe he thinks I should be locked up for my own protection. The moment he gets out of here he’ll call the men with straightjackets. “I’ve been having these really…intense dreams. They keep me up most of the night, almost every night. And, frankly, they scare the hell out of me.” She saw no reason to mention that Professor Glazer was having similar dreams or that she felt somehow responsible for Jack’s disappearance.
“And I can help you…?”
“You know the expression two heads are better than one?” she asked. “Sometimes in magic, two are stronger than one. I’ve been using magic and homeopathic remedies to help me, but I think I need to ”up the ante“ against these dreams. To get control of my sleep, to get control of my life again.”
“Are you trying to tell me this involves you and me in a…magic circle?”
“Yes.”
“And we’d be, urn, naked, of course.”
“It works better that way,” she said, smiling.
Wide grin. “So what’s the downside?”
“This may sound kinky to you,” she said, “but it’s … serious to me.” She almost said deadly serious, but that would definitely put him over the edge. “The downside for me is that it might not work. But I really need to try. I want you to be as serious about this as I am. if it’s a dirty joke to you, it won’t work. Magic rituals are all about a state of mind.”
“So if I do this, and take it seriously, then you’ll believe me about understanding it all?”
“It would sure help your case, young man,” she said and grinned. She was using her leverage unfairly, but it was merely a hint of her desperation. He needed enough wiggle room to feel he could decline without hurting her feelings. “Do you think you can approach it with an open mind?”
He thought for a moment, sighed, and said, “I think so.”< /p>
“Good,” she said, kissing him again. But this was more than a thank-you kiss, it was a kiss filled with possibilities. With her hands light around his neck and his hands around her waist she could almost feel safe, she could almost hope.
“How long do I have to think about it?”
She dropped her hands, stepped back, breathed deeply. “Till nightfall. Come back when the moon is high. Let’s say eight-thirtyish.”
“Tonight?” he asked, stunned. “You’re talking about tonight?”
“Unless you have other plans.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
* * *
At sundown, Saturday, October 30, residents throughout Windale began to take precautions against the night’s anticipated mischief—turning on all available porch and deck lights, parking the nicer of the family cars in the garage, leaving the dog out in the backyard a little bit later. In years past, such precautions weren’t really necessary; the worst anyone suffered were a couple of soaped windshields, a few clumsily thrown eggs splattered on the front walk. And, honestly, who didn’t secretly chuckle at the sight of an old crabapple tree festooned with gently blowing streamers of toilet paper?
But this year was different. It was more than just the rash of vandalism that had claimed church steeples throughout the county; more than the mysterious vanishings; more than the strange animal cries heard in the woods at night. There was something palpably different in the air, a premature chill. True, the King Frost Parade was so named for a reason, and any day now local gardeners expected to wake and find that the first hard frost had crept in during the night and slaughtered the impatiens in their beds. But this early chill felt different, somehow, than other years. More wicked, in some indefinable way.
And so this Mischief Night as the first bats began flitting among the treetops, parents began breaking the bad news to their children that they wouldn’t be allowed out this year to rove the neighborhoods in giggling packs. It wasn’t a decision reached like so many others after supermarket consultations with neighboring couples, but rather a silent townwide consensus. Something was out there, the parents of Windale knew, fastening the front door’s dead bolt at seven-thirty—though they couldn’t exactly say what was out there, and were too many generations removed from superstition to call it by its given name…
The Curse.
On the Danfield College campus, however, it was another story entirely. The parents of these thirty-one hundred students were far, far away…while the need for a midterm bacchanalia was far more immediate. Like the collegiate rule that dictates weekends shall begin on Thursday evening, Halloween was declared by the students of Danfield a two-night holiday, and as the first long shadows began to overreach the campus the telltale sounds of early celebration could be heard: here a peal of surprised laughter as a girl was hoisted onto a shoulder; there the somber chords of some classic rock anthem blaring from a dorm window.
In town, Sheriff Bill Nottingham was deep into the paperwork that rose up on all sides of him, like water in a flooded basement. Twenty minutes earlier he’d grunted when his secretary, Agnes, had bid him good night, and
now he looked up and saw with surprise that night had crept up on him. He was alone in the oasis of light cast by his single desk lamp. Outside the windows, which fronted the town square and the war memorial, darkness had gathered like an unexpected storm. He sipped his coffee and was surprised to find it cold.
In the next room, the police scanner chattered quietly, his deputies (Jeff Schaeffer and Reed Davis) reaching out to each other across the airwaves as they kept their lonely beat.
All quiet, the sheriff thought, and made a mental note to himself of the time—7:58. He hoped the town had seen the last excitement for the season. They’d earned it Hell, with the last month’s trouble they should’ve earned themselves good karma into the next century. But he’d be satisfied with one quiet night. Just one…
Wendy glanced out her window with a sense of apprehension, afraid her vicious genie was waiting out there in the night. Her parents had left for their fund-raiser. She grabbed her duffel bag and headed downstairs, where Alex waited.
“Are we going where I think we’re going?” Alex asked.
“Same place,” Wendy said. “It’s usually secluded.”
“Right,” he said, chagrined. “Usually. So what’s in the bag?”
“A few things I think I’ll need,” she said.
On the drive to Gable Road, Alex was unnaturally silent. He fussed with his sunglasses, turning them over and over in his lap. Earlier he had seemed ready to sit in his first magic circle, but she suspected that might have been pure bravado. When they passed the Windale Motel and Restaurant, he sat up a little straighter.
“Having second thoughts?” she asked. What if he says yes? Can I afford to let him back out now?
“No, I’m cool,” he said, sounding nervous nonetheless. “You really think this ritual will help you?”
It has to! “I do,” Wendy said, trying to sound calm. “Maybe it’s just for my peace of mind,” she said, offering him a rational bone to chew on. It was one thing to accept her “eccentricities” as part of her personality, but quite another for him to participate in them willingly. “Maybe my dreams and insomnia are psychosomatic and this is the placebo I need to get me back on track.”
“Who knows?” Alex said, and she was grateful he hadn’t jumped on the easy, rational conclusion she had offered. “If you feel you need to do this, then you probably do.”
She braked suddenly and swerved onto the shoulder. Alexs hand clutched the dashboard. “We’re here,” she said.
“You asked me earlier about my self-control… What exactly…?”
& ldquo;I’ll tell you what to do once we’re in the clearing,“ Wendy said. ”We have to get off the road before somebody sees us and decides to “help.”“ She stepped out of the car, taking the duffel bag with her. After she tied the soiled T-shirt to her door handle, she pushed in the lock knob and slammed the door shut. She started for the woods, then noticed Alex was still in the car. Returning to the car, she leaned toward his open window and said, ”Alex?“
“Just trying to steel myself, get my head in the game,” he said, then sighed and climbed out of the car. He tossed his sunglasses on the dashboard, then slammed his door after a reluctant shrug.
She kissed him lightly and said, “No altars. I promise.”
“I know,” he said, “I trust you.” He followed her along the deer trail to her special clearing in the woods.
“Don’t worry,” she said, “we’re all alone.”
“Famous last words.”
Well, she thought, you should know.
Alex watched patiently as she dug a circular groove in the dirt, filled it with flour through a paper funnel to form a white circle, then marked the four points of the compass with burning candles in antique brass holders. He sat down outside the circle as she placed a bowl of rice to the north, a cup of wine to the west, a brass burner ablaze with kindling to the south, and finally, the brass incense holder with three sandalwood sticks smoking to the east.
She removed the contents of the wooden chest, laid the mandrake root atop it, then unfolded her meditation mat. She stood in the center of the circle, her face set in an expression of grim concentration. Alex looked around the deep blackness of the woods, the red and orange and yellow of leaves that still clung tenaciously to gnarled branches, the tree trunks’ stark silhouettes, strangely two dimensional in the cold light of the moon. His gaze always returned to the center of the glade. Glowingly alive within the four points of fire, sparks of flame glinting in her eyes, Wendy seemed the only thing of substance in this gray and black landscape.
She picked up her linen robe and stepped out of the circle, stepping carefully over the white line, to join Alex. “Everything’s ready now,” she said, draping the robe over her shoulders. “I used a smaller circle to concentrate the heat from the candles and the burner. That should keep us warm.” She took a breath, then asked, “Are you ready to join me?”
“Maybe it would help if you explained again why this is necessary,” he suggested.
“To stop the nightmares, to cure my insomnia,” she said patiently. And I feel like my life is coming apart at the seams. “Something like this worked before, but I need your help to make it…stronger.”
“Will I have nightmares about this?” he said with a nervous smile.
“Calm thoughts,” she said. “Pleasant dreams. You’ll be fine.” Her smile was inviting, somehow comforting. “Id like you to join me. I’m comfortable with you. I trust you. But if this makes you uncomfortable, it defeats the purpose of having you within the circle. It has to be your willing decision.” Her confidence was a little false bravado for his sake: she was nearly ready to collapse from nerves. But the ritual was important. Though she wavered, she always returned to this certainty. She reached within her robe, began unbuttoning her V-neck sweater.
“And the nudity thing is important?”
“To be in tune with nature,” she said. “Clothes dampen the natural power of your body.”
“I thought that was a line only guys used,” he said, smiling. He was blushing faintly, walking in tight circles with his hands on his hips, as if cooling down from a hard run. He kept steeling furtive glances in her direction. “Okay. All right”
She smiled, slipped her arms out of her sweater under the rohe like a contortionist working free of a straightjacket, but her hands trembled nervously. She told herself, It’s okay. This is just like that time I went skinny-dipping with Scott Jones in Cooper Pond. I have nothing to be ashamed of. It’s… natural. Completely natural. A French woman wouldn’t even, give this a second thought. And I really do trust Alex. Its okay.
She breathed deeply, and that helped to steady her hands. She kicked ofTher cross-trainers, doffed her black jeans. She forced herself not to hesitate when she got down to her underwear. She hooked her thumbs in her panties and then skinned them down. See how easy that was? she thought. Just don’t think about it too much, God, is he looking?
She had been able to remove the bandage from her thigh; the wounds shed dug with her own nails had almost completely healed. Four faint pink lines were the only traces of the injury. She doubted she would even have scars. Just another part of the strangeness that is my life. She folded her clothes neatly atop the duffel bag, then finally looked at Alex. “I’m going to begin now,” she said evenly. “You can join me up till the moment I close the circle by facing east—the incense burner—the second time. If you join me, I will guide you through the ritual. Leave your clothes here with mine and be careful not to break the circle when you enter it.”
Without waiting for his answer, she turned her back to him to step into the circle again. She stood on her meditation mat, trying to calm herself and fight her own rising embarrassment. She was aware of his gaze fixed on her back. Maybe he thought she was out for revenge for his spying on her, to get him stripped down to his birthday suit. It was too late to ease that possible concern. He would just have to trust her.
With some degree of grace, she loosened the drawstrin
g of the robe and let it slide down her body. It fell with an urgent whisper of cloth against skin.
She heard a sharp intake of breath as she turned to face Alex, who stood just within reach of the candlelight. He was looking fixedly in her eyes, and she was surprised to see a confidence there in his expression, too, a startling trust. The fallen robe formed a warm ring of cloth around her as she sat in the lotus position, facing east.
The night was colder than last time, but the flames were closer. She shivered in the cool breeze, welcomed each hint of warmth from the fire. She placed her herbs, flowers, mortar, pestle, and stones within reach, then closed her eyes and concentrated on centering herself. She must draw energy from the earth and the sky, from herself and her interaction with Alex—should he decide to participate—and hold all those energies within herself until it was time to channel them.
She fought to eliminate all outside awareness, trying to remove Alex from her consciousness. When she opened her eyes he might be gone. Or he might even stay, but not join her in the circle. The smallest possibility, the one she most desperately hoped for, remained. But as she had told him, that was his decision, beyond her control, outside her center.
When at last she felt completely focused, at peace, her eyes fluttered open, as if she awoke from a hypnotist’s trance. Now she must commune with the elements.
“Welcome my mind to your essence, Air” she said, her voice trembling, her gaze climbing the fairy rope of incense smoke into the night sky. She shifted her position. “Welcome my heart to your essence, Fire.” She was most conscious of Fire, as she ached for the warmth it provided. “Welcome my life to your essence, Water,” she said, sipping wine as she faced west. Shifted again. “Welcome my body to your essence, Earth,” she said, aware of the firm ground ! beneath her. Next, she must turn to the east again, to close the circle. Still no Alex…
