by Nhys Glover
Hilary choked out a laugh. “You don’t seriously think porn can teach you what a woman likes, do you? All it does is teach you what fat-headed misogynists think women like. All that instant moaning and groaning the moment a guy sticks it to the girl? The way the girls are all desperate to suck cock. Give me a break! Pure male fantasy. Ask one of your girls some time, if you’re not too afraid to hear the truth.”
“Enough!” I cried, my face burning with mortification. “I just want you to treat your willing bedmates with a little respect. That’s all. Okay? Respect.”
Hilary started prancing around the marble-floor atrium singing “R-E-S-P-E-C-T Find out what it means to me!” In her best Aretha Franklin impersonation.
I didn’t even know the kids knew songs like that anymore.
“No more karaoke nights for you, Hil! That’s awful!” Michael wailed, covering his ears.
Hilary, reverting to her child-self yet again, rushed over to hit her younger brother in the arm, annoyance written all over her face.
Laughing, Michael fended her off without returning fire. It was sweet, in a twisted sort of way. I felt Mom laughing in my mind.
“Okay, okay, enough!” I yelled over the chaos. “Hilly, take your brother upstairs to his room. Show him around, if he wants. I’ll go see what we have in the freezer. It’ll be dinnertime before we realize it.”
As if removing a mask, Hilly became Hilary once more, allowing Michael to become an almost-man again. I half-regretted the return to adulthood.
“Think Grandma has pizza?” Michael asked, as if he hadn’t filled up on food at Mary’s place not two hours before.
Adult or child, Michael always thought with his stomach.
“I’ll look. Go!” I ordered with an indulgent smile, heading for the kitchen.
6
The following morning the doorbell drew me from the books I was studying in the library. Hilary had slept in, the excitement of the last few days catching up with her pregnant-self. Michael was in the attic exploring. Every so often I heard a loud thump or a cry of delight as he uncovered yet another masterpiece some past resident had hidden away up there.
So, the task of answering the doorbell fell to me. Worriedly, I trudged down the hall from the back of the house to the front. I wasn’t expecting anyone, and I couldn’t imagine too many people who’d brave the blight to visit. If there were any well-wishers in town, besides Mary and her family, they would surely have come to the funeral to pay their respects.
As I opened the door, I was greeted by an imposing form blocking out the morning light. After momentary shock, my eyes adjusted enough for me to recognize the Great Dane scientist from the day before. This time, though, instead of a dark suit, he wore a flannel shirt, tee, and jeans. The label of logger came instantly to mind again.
“Mrs. –” the man began.
“Ms. Channing,” I hastily interrupted the greeting. “But call me Cleo. You were at the funeral yesterday and spoke up against those crazies. Thank you for that.”
A broad smile split the man’s features, turning average looks into handsome. If you liked nerdy loggers that was. He had short brown hair and hazel eyes, if the specs didn’t deceive me. And those pearly-whites could have come from an LA dentist.
“Crazies they are. I’ve had a few run-ins with them since I started working on this project. I never got how your mother stood it. She should have reported the harassment. It isn’t right. This isn’t the dark ages!”
I laughed and ushered the man in. He still hadn’t given me his name, but I felt no threat from him. And I needed as many people on my side as I could get. Even scientists.
“Come in. I’m sorry, but I didn’t get your name yesterday. You didn’t come to the wake after.”
“Oh, yeah, sorry. Luke Myers. Dr. Luke Myers, if I’m being fancy. I have a doctorate in environmental research and work for the EPA, Environmental Protection Agency. I’ve spent the last few years, on and off, doing research on your property. It’s fascinating.”
We’d entered the front parlor where Mom always entertained guests when I was a kid. I directed Myers to a seat in front of the empty fireplace. Sitting in the corresponding chair, I rolled my eyes.
“Fascinating is not the word I’d use for it. Devastating is my choice du jour.”
The scientist nodded, his humor evaporating in an instant. “I forget how people react to the sight of it the first time they come across it. I guess I don’t even notice the grotesqueness of it anymore. All I see is a mystery I need to solve.”
“And you think you can solve it, Dr. Myers?” I asked carefully, feeling a small niggle of hope in my gut for the first time.
“I hope so. It would be the epitome of my career. My predecessors have been unable to come up with any explanations, no less a cure. I hope to be the one to succeed.”
“As I do, but probably not for the same reason. This is not about my career Doctor, this is about my heritage, my land.”
“Call me Luke, please. And I totally understand where you’re coming from. It was the same place your mother came from. I really respected that lady. I wanted to tell you that yesterday. She’ll be greatly missed.”
“Not by the townsfolk, that’s for sure,” I said bitterly, staring into the cold fireplace.
Memories of it burning brightly on a cold winter’s night made my heart ache. It felt so long ago, and yet in another way, it felt like only yesterday. When had I gotten so old that the past became more real to me than the present?
Since I came home, was the answer to that question. Since I was forced to confront the past I preferred to forget.
“I wanted to come by, pay my respects, and catch you up on where we're at in our work. If it isn’t a suitable time I can come back. I would have rung for an appointment, but I didn’t get a chance to get your number and your mother didn’t have a landline. I suppose her cell was smashed in New… Oh, shit, sorry. That was tactless.”
“It’s okay. You don’t have to walk on eggshells around me. I was overwhelmed yesterday, but I’m okay now. It’s just a shock to be back. A shock not to see Mom here. I haven’t been back for twenty-five years.”
Luke nodded, his intelligent hazel eyes taking me in for a moment longer than was polite. “Your mother told me that, and I got a sense that you were sent away back when this thing started. But I have no idea why. Surely your mother didn’t blame you for any of this. If so, I can assure you that nothing a teenage girl could have done would have caused the wholesale environmental damage evidenced here.”
I liked how protective he sounded. As if he wanted to slay my dragons for me. It had been a long time since a man wanted to do that for me. Paul had given me that feeling, back at the beginning. He made the perfect aging knight errant. But he hadn’t meant it, not beyond seeing to my financial needs.
Although I was a self-sufficient Channing woman, a part of me still needed a man I could depend on. I guess when your dad leaves you at six years of age it’s hard not to want a replacement. Paul had been that replacement for a while… Now though… Well, now I was a woman in her middle years who shouldn't need a man for anything. I didn’t even need his sperm, because I had no plans to have more children. I had my two. I’d quit while I was ahead, and my body was still in good working order.
“Yes, my mother sent me away because she thought it might be the only way to reverse the damage done, but she never actually blamed me. If she blamed anyone it was herself. I suppose she didn’t share our family secret with you?” I asked cautiously.
I had no idea why I was considering sharing this stranger-than-fiction story with a stranger. A man of science who would scoff at talk of magic. Yet, if he was going to be of any kind of assistance in fixing this issue, he needed to understand the magical component.
Maybe it was the belief that the solution might lie in combining magic and science, as Mom had done with her products. Either one alone was limited in its effectiveness, but together miracles could happen.
> Luke frowned and leaned forward, resting his chin on his hands while his elbows rested on his knees. He looked like a child ready to hear a story, eyes alight with interest and excitement.
“No. Mostly our conversations involved me giving her updates on our research. None of it positive, unfortunately.”
I nodded, the assurance that telling this man what I believed was really happening here was growing with every passing second. Taking a deep breath. I began removing the metaphorical bandages so my wounds could be properly examined.
“Okay. So, as you saw yesterday, there is a faction within the community that considers us witches. They aren’t wrong.” When he began to argue I hurried on. “Not the in-league-with-the-devil part of it. That is so far from the truth it’s insulting. We’re Wiccan, I suppose you could say. Hedge witches. My ancestors made herbal remedies and stopped the so-called physicians of the past from killing off every person who got sick. My mother used her natural talent inherited from her ancestors to start a business. It has become a very successful business, I discovered yesterday.”
Luke nodded. “I knew about your mother’s company. It was the first place my predecessors started when investigating the phenomenon. They believed that something during her research and development stage had caused the initial problem. But your mother was more than willing to share her documentation with us, and all testing has repeatedly shown that there is nothing wrong with the land.”
He paused for a moment as if thinking where to go next. “Do you know how fast this thing is spreading?”
I nodded uncertainly. “Mom’s lawyer said the outside of the circle grows around a hundred and twenty yards a year. I can’t get my head around that, I’m afraid. Math was not my subject at school.”
“It isn’t most people’s subject when it comes to these kinds of calculations. Think of it this way. Every couple of days the blight spreads about two feet.”
My mind boggled at that information. Somehow it seemed worse to imagine it on a day-to-day basis sliding inch by inch into living land and killing it. In a day it would cover twelve inches, a foot. No wonder we saw the damage so quickly when it started. The creeping progress would have been so easy to spot for someone who worked in the gardens.
He huffed out a sigh of frustration. “Frightening when you think of it that way, isn’t it? Part of our work is to monitor its progress month by month. So I can report that it's steady. No matter what the terrain is like, the growth on all sides remains consistent.
“One of the first things I did when I took over was to take some of the soil from the garden out back. My analysis of the samples all showed no abnormally high levels of toxic chemicals or compounds, so I decided to test out the soil. I wanted to see if it could sustain life if it was removed to another area.”
This was interesting, and I nodded for him to go on. “I was able to successfully grow several plants in the soil. Perfectly healthy plants. But when I returned the soil, with the plants, to its original place, the plants died shortly thereafter. So there are definitely no toxins in the soil. Yet the many air samples we’ve taken show it’s normal, as are the readings from the water tables. There are no higher-than-normal levels of electro-magnetic radiation… any radiation for that matter… in the area. So, lots of findings, but all of them negative. Which, in one way, is good.”
I nodded, sitting back. It wasn't anything I hadn’t expected to hear. I knew there was nothing wrong with the soil. Or the water. My mom had been drinking from our well for years without a problem. No, it still came back to me.
“So, as I was saying,” I went on resolutely. “My family are witches. You can call it a religion if you like. A Pagan religion. But it’s not in any way associated with demon worship or Satanism.
“All the women in our family have gifts, abilities that are more than what the average person has. We call it magic. You can call it something else. I don’t much care. One of my ancestors had the gift of prophecy. She prophesied that an innocent would one day be tainted, and that that taint would spread to the land. Only by removing the taint would the land recover. Hence the reason my mother removed me, because I was the innocent who was tainted.”
I drew in a couple of deep breaths, unsure just how much of my private life I wanted to share. But then, if I was going to get his help he needed to know it all.
“When I was sixteen an older boy from school took my virginity. No big deal, right? What girl doesn’t lose her virginity in the backseat of a car? He might have been a bit rough, but again, guys aren’t very experienced at that age, so I could write it off as that. What caused the ‘taint’ if you like, was not so much the loss of my innocence, as the humiliation I experienced after the fact. The guy treated me like a whore and wouldn’t even acknowledge me at school. I was devastated. I’d had a crush on him for years, and it had seemed like a dream come true when he kissed me and… well, did the rest. I wanted it. Believe me, I wanted it. But I thought it meant something. And it didn’t. It meant less than nothing to him.”
I paused to steady my nerves. This was so much harder than I expected it to be. And from the embarrassed expression on Luke’s face I could tell he really didn’t want to be hearing my deepest secrets. He probably thought I was as crazy as those religious nuts, by claiming to be a witch and blabbing on about my virginity, as if it mattered.
“And the following week Mom discovered the first dead plants in her garden, and she knew that it had something to do with me moping about the place. She told me about the prophecy, how she had thought it all rubbish, but now she wasn’t sure. I told her what happened and… and as I said, the only way she could think of to correct the problem was to do as the prophecy said and send me away. Remove the taint, as it were.
“But it didn’t work. Just as everything you’ve done didn’t work. It doesn’t surprise me that you can’t find anything wrong. We believe the problem is magical, for want of a better word. And now Mom is gone, it falls to me to find a way to remove the taint.”
Luke stared at me for a moment before clearing his throat and speaking. “You believe this, don’t you? For what, twenty-five years you’ve believed that, because you slept with a boy, you somehow tainted the land you lived on? You do know how… impossible that is, right? I can see how the timing of the initial infection could have seemed like more than a coincidence. And there is such a thing as a self-fulfilling prophecy. But things like that don’t happen. This is not Harry Potter World.”
I growled. I was so sick of everyone equating magic with Harry Potter.
“Please don’t belittle my beliefs. If I had thought you so narrow-minded I wouldn’t have told you our secret. And a self-fulfilling prophecy requires a person to have known the prophecy before the event. So they can unconsciously bring it into fruition. I didn’t know anything about it. That was the problem. Every other girl in my family was told, well in advance, what might happen. They all guarded their innocence fanatically. Then Mom came along in the 60s and 70s and let loose with all that free love, and no terrible calamity happened. So she didn’t bother telling me. She thought the prophecy was a dud. Stupid. But it wasn’t.” I sighed heavily in defeat, staring sightlessly into the empty fireplace.
“So, what you’re saying is that your mother didn’t taint the land by losing her virginity outside marriage, but somehow you did? I’m afraid I’m with her. It doesn’t make sense. If tainted innocence is the catalyst, then your mother should have been the one to set it in motion,” Luke argued, using his scientific mind.
“But what if it's not literally the act itself but the meaning behind the act. My mom didn’t care about her virginity. In fact, she was desperate to get rid of it, in an attempt to liberate herself from the past. But me… I wasn’t like that. I wasn’t interested in sex. I don’t think I thought my body was a temple or anything like that. I certainly didn’t thing sex was a sin. But I valued the act. I wanted my first time to be special with the guy I loved. And because it wasn’t, I somehow tainted mysel
f and the land. I felt dirty and used and… and… Oh, why am I bothering to share my embarrassing past with you? For all I know you were one of those guys. I don’t know what I was thinking…”
Luke was kneeling in front of me in the next instance, his big hands covering mine. “I was never one of those guys, believe me. And I think the guy who did that to you was a dick. You deserved better. I’m sorry that happened to you. I really am. But… there is absolutely no way that there is a causal relationship between the two events. It’s impossible.”
I felt a little better, for all Luke still refused to consider the ‘causal relationship’, as he labeled it.
“Okay. I just wanted you to have all the facts. I can’t expect you to find answers if you don’t have the background. Full disclosure. But I have to ask you not to share this with anyone else, please. You can see how mortified I am discussing such personal details with you. The idea that it becomes part of some government report… No, I just can’t have that happen. Please.”
I was pleading, having now realized it was completely possible my secret could end up being a paragraph in a report, reduced to scientific gobbledygook.
“I promise your secret goes no further,” Luke assured me, squeezing my hands. “And I appreciate your honesty. It’s important to have a thorough understanding of a situation from every perspective, so that theories can have as firm a foundation as possible. But I hope that you will consider my argument. In all my years as a scientist I have never seen a causal relationship like the one you are suggesting. Please let it go. Let go of the guilt. You are in no way to blame. Let go, so we can get on with finding the real cause of the problem.”
I huffed out a sigh and plastered on a smile. “I appreciate your input and your willingness to keep this off the books. But now, if you don’t mind, I’m wrung out. I need a rest…”
Luke took the hint and rose from the floor far more gracefully than a man his size should have done. “Of course. Do I have your permission to keep investigating?”
