by Rik Hunik
Widdershins
by Rik Hunik
Copyright 2013 by Rik Hunik
Chapter 1
The two-year-old girl in the red plastic wagon squealed with delight as Berdine pulled her around the back yard as fast as she could run, spiraling in toward the birch tree in the center of the lawn where Roland, sitting on the grass to catch his breath after his turn pulling the wagon, leaned back on his elbows and watched as his wife and daughter went behind the tree for the third time.
Ellen's childish laughter ceased abruptly. Roland sat up straight, cold panic clenching his heart. The wagon was empty. He leaped to his feet and dashed around the tree to where his wife had stopped. Ellen had spilled out of the wagon before on sharp turns, but Roland saw no child anywhere on the grass. His gaze darted everywhere within the fenced yard but kept coming back to the empty wagon. "Where is she? I don't see her."
Barely louder than a whisper Berdine said, "She's gone."
"Gone where? How?"
"When I went past the tree the wagon got lighter. I thought she had fallen out but when I turned around she was gone. Completely gone. I can't find her. Why can't I find her?"
Roland saw his own rising panic mirrored in her face and made an effort to keep his voice calm. "Where could she go?" Berdine stared blankly at him so he tried to think for both of them. "She's too small to climb the fence and she didn't go past me, and there's nowhere else to go, so she has to be here somewhere." He dropped to his hands and knees and felt the ground all around the wagon. It was solid.
As he got back to his feet Berdine cocked her head, cupped a hand behind her ear and said, "I hear her," then ran around the tree.
This time Roland saw it happen, her image wavering and rippling like she was being distorted by heat waves as she stepped behind the trunk, and she did not emerge on the far side. The tree trunk was only eight inches in diameter and the lowest branches were over his head so she could not be hiding. He grabbed the trunk with both hands and looked rapidly from one side to the other but saw no sign of his child or his wife.
In the last minute he'd just lost everything that meant anything to him. He threw back his head and shouted, "No!" He pounded on the trunk with the heels of his hands, he kicked it a few times, then just leaned his head against it and moaned.
"What's going on back here?"
Roland jumped away from the tree and spun around. "Mervin, am I ever glad to see you."
Mervin, a thin, white-whiskered, slow-moving old man in faded jeans, made his way around the house onto the back lawn, leaning heavily on his cane. He appeared to be in his late eighties, but even though he still walked more kilometers every day than the average person, Roland always found it painful to watch him, so he hurried forward to meet the old man.
"Am I too late?" Mervin asked.
"Too late for what?"
"I was at home doing a tarot reading when the cards indicated something terrible was about to happen to a neighbor so I came over right away."
Roland didn't need to ask how he had known where to go. When Roland and Berdine had just bought this two-acre, rural lot, Mervin Lermin had witched a well for them, and told them where to build and how to align their house to be in harmony with the natural energy flow of their land. Most people considered him to be an old crackpot, into occultism, magic, UFOs and other fringe phenomena, but Roland and Berdine had liked him from the start and become friends. He sometimes read their minds or made true predictions without being aware he had done so, as if it was perfectly natural to him, but he didn't want anybody else to know he could do it.
"I am too late, aren't I. I knew it when I saw your face."
Roland slumped. "Yeah, you're right."
"Tell me what happened."
"You'll think I'm crazy."
"Just tell me."
Roland took a deep breath to compose himself, then led the old man to the birch tree while he filled him in. Mervin hobbled around the tree, bent low over his cane to examine the tracks in the grass, then he stood up and turned a complete circle, studying the chain-link fence and the trees beyond. He questioned Roland about a few details, then said, "Well, I have some good news and some bad news for you."
Roland had always hated good news/bad news jokes, but he knew Mervin knew that, so he just sighed, and said, "Okay, give me the bad news first."
"Your daughter and your wife are no longer on Earth."
The whole world seemed to spin and tilt but Roland held onto the tree until the dizziness passed. At any other time we would have been at least a bit skeptical of Mervin's strange stories and wild theories, but this time it only confirmed what he already knew in his heart. "Where are they?"
"Not far. They stepped through a gateway into a world next door."
Roland studied the innocent-looking patch of grass where his family had vanished. "How come I didn't go through the gate?"
"You weren't traveling widdershins like they were."
"Widdershins?"
"Against the sun, counterclockwise." Mervin indicated the direction by circling with his forefinger pointed down. "And they were spiraling inward, gathering energy."
"Where did they go?"
"To Elfland."
"Elfland?" Roland felt his eyebrows rising and he felt a laugh coming, but when he looked into Mervin's eyes he saw at once that the old man was serious. "Like in fairy tales?"
"Not quite. Fairy tales were based on facts, as they were known at the time, but times change in Elfland too."
"Oh." Roland was silent while he absorbed this new information. "So what's the good news?"
"You can get them back."
Hope flared in Roland's breast. "What do I have to do?"
"You must hurry. The gate closes at twilight."
"How do you know that?"
"Trust me, I am familiar with these things. Gates like this open to different worlds at many places around our world on special days, such as the winter solstice, midsummer night or Halloween."
"What's special about today?"
"Spring starts tomorrow. Today is the last day the sun is down longer than it's up."
Roland scratched his head, trying to absorb it all, not wanting to believe, but he had to believe in this eccentric old man if he wanted any chance to get his family back.
Mervin said, "Your wife and daughter are not the first people to disappear, you know. There are dozens, perhaps hundreds of unexplained disappearances every year, just in Canada."
"So why did it happen in my back yard?"
"Several decades ago there was a small church here. It burned to the ground under suspicious circumstances and this tree was planted where the steeple once stood." Mervin absently peeled a strip of bark off the trunk and crumpled it like paper in his fist.
"Dammit, if you knew all that, why didn't you warn us sooner?"
Mervin flushed and cast his eyes down. He shuffled his feet and said in a low voice, "Either my age is affecting me more than I thought, or I was under some kind of befuddlement spell." Then, in a clearer, slightly louder voice, "I'm sorry, I lost track of the date; I thought today was Saturday. When the cards warned me I realized my mistake and phoned right away, but no one answered so I hurried over. Unfortunately I arrived too late."
The old man's contrition took the edge off Roland's anger. "I'm sorry Mervin, I didn't mean to come down on you like that, it's just that I'm rather stressed right now." Roland leaned against the birch tree, gripping its unyielding hardness, and tried to calm himself. "It's not your fault Ellen and Berdine are gone, but you've got to tell me how I can get them back."
"It will be very dangerous."
"I can take care of myself." As a carpenter he did plenty of physical labor, he sometimes lifted weights, and he had earned a brown belt in kung fu.
Mervin nodded. "I hope you're right. Do you have a gun?"
"Yeah, a .22 caliber target pistol. I'm a pretty good shot with it."
Mervin shook his head. "That will never do. It's nowhere near big enough. Now come, you must drive me home and I will prepare you for your journey."
