by Brian Keene
Ashamed, he had a sudden urge to run back inside, take Marsha in his arms and apologize to her.
What was he doing out here, anyway?
“I was about to ask you the same thing.”
Donny gasped but did not scream. He was too startled to scream. He spun around quickly, pulling his arms in tight over his midsection and kicked out with his foot. The blow swept by Levi but didn’t faze him.
“Jesus fucking Christ, dude! You scared the shit out of me. Don’t you know not to sneak up on someone like that?”
“Language. I don’t mind cursing, but neither do I appreciate you taking the Lord’s name in vain.”
“Sorry. You just really spooked me.” Donny straightened to his full height again. “So, what . . . ? You can read minds, too? How did you do that?”
“I have my ways.”
“Well, you shouldn’t have crept up like that. I mean, damn . . . I could have killed you just now,
Levi.”
“No, you couldn’t have.”
“You sure are a cocky bastard, Levi.”
“I’m not cocky. I’m confident. Arrogance is a sin. Being prepared isn’t. Now what are you doing out here? I told you to stay inside the house.”
Donny grinned. “And I told you I don’t take orders anymore.”
Levi stepped closer, until his forehead was only inches from Donny’s chin. As he stared up into the younger man’s eyes, Donny saw the anger in his expression—and something else, too. Fear. Levi was afraid, he realized, and that only increased Donny’s own uneasiness.
“Do you think this is a game? This isn’t some comic book or movie fantasy, where we defeat the bad guys with no consequences during the battle. I meant what I said, Donny. I can’t protect you out here. I need you to go back inside, for my own sake as well as yours.”
“I can handle myself, Levi. Trust me on that.”
“I know you can. I have no doubts about your abilities, and I’m sure you’d be good to have at my side in a tough situation, but that’s not what I’m talking about.”
“Then what are you talking about? What do you mean when you say for your sake as well as mine?”
Levi’s voice softened. “I . . . I have enough blood on my hands. Enough ghosts following me around. I don’t need to add any more.”
“Me either, Levi. You think I don’t know about guilt? You think I don’t know what it’s like to kill somebody—I mean, what it’s really like? That feeling you get in your stomach. The way it follows you through the day. Or how it feels to lose a friend—to watch them die right in fucking front of you— while you go on living? I reckon I know how that feels better than you think.”
Levi stared at him for a moment. His expression changed, and for a moment, Donny thought the older man was going to cry. But then his features smoothed out again.
“Okay,” Levi said. “I’m still not sure I understand your motivations, especially when you have a fine woman waiting inside who clearly loves you. In truth, though, I appreciate the company. It’s not often somebody walks this road with me. But understand me, Donny. Your fate rests squarely on your shoulders. I can’t protect you beyond the house. I can mask our presence somewhat, so that we can move about unmolested. But we’re not going to be evading them for long. I need to confront them. That’s the only way I’ll get the information I need to stop this.”
“Well, let’s get to it, then. We can go find them or we can stand around here talking all night long. Which is it going to be?”
“You’re not afraid?”
“Of course I’m afraid, Levi. I’m fucking terrified. And so are you. I can see it on your face. But if you think you’ve got a way to stop these . . . whatever they are, and I can help you do it, then I say we do it already.”
Levi nodded. “Let’s go. I have to find something first.”
Donny followed him across the street, resisting the urge to glance behind them and see if Marsha was watching. A part of him hoped that she wasn’t, but an even bigger part of him would have been disappointed if he turned and didn’t see her. He hesitated, his steps faltering. His legs felt heavy.
“Do you happen to know which—?” Levi paused, noticing Donny’s discomfort. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah.”
“Having second thoughts?”
“No,” Donny insisted. “I’m fine. What were you doing out here, anyway? Myrtle looked outside right after you left, and said she didn’t see you. We thought you’d gone.”
“I was, but then I remembered that I had to do some shopping first.”
Donny frowned. “Shopping?”
“Yes, in a way. I was trying to figure out which one of these homes belonged to Myrtle. I’m certain that, given her proclivities, she probably has what I need.”
“Proclivities? You mean all that New Age stuff?”
“Yes.”
“So why not just knock on the door and ask her?” Levi shrugged. “At the time, I was worried that if I returned, I’d have to argue with you about not coming with me again. But now that you’re here anyway . . .”
Donny pointed across the street. “That’s her house, over there.”
“You don’t want to go back to Esther’s either.”
“Is it that obvious?”
“It is to me,” Levi said as they crossed the street.
“And to Marsha, I would assume. And to anyone else who has eyes and has ever been in love.”
Donny’s ears began to burn. His skin felt flushed. “I don’t mean to pry,” Levi continued, “but it’s clear to me that you love her as much as she loves you. What’s the problem?”
“I don’t want to hurt her anymore.”
“You hurt her once? Infidelity?”
“No, nothing like that. I’d never do that to Marsha. It’s just . . . it’s complicated. I don’t like it here. I never have. This town . . . it weighs on you. It eats away at people. You know what I mean? It just never felt like home to me.”
“So you ran away?”
“Yeah, I reckon so—if you call joining the army and going to Iraq running away.”
“And did you find what you were looking for overseas? Did war feel like home?”
“No. It felt like hell.”
“So you returned.”
“Not by choice. Believe me, this was the last place I wanted to come back to. But my mom got sick. Cancer.”
“Where is she now?”
Donny sighed. “She passed. I stayed long enough to take care of her estate. Put the house on the market. Made sure the funeral director was paid. I was leaving tonight, in fact. A few minutes earlier and I wouldn’t have been here when all this started. I’d have been on the road and miles away.”
“Where were you going?” Levi asked as they approached Myrtle’s front door.
“I don’t know. I hadn’t thought that far ahead, to be honest. Anywhere, I suppose. Anywhere that felt right, you know? Some place where I could find myself.”
“Well, you’re here now.”
“What’s that supposed to mean? You telling me this is all fate?”
Levi shrugged. “Fate. God’s will. Call it what you want. Some people think the universe is chaotic—that there’s no rhyme or reason to why things happen. I think they’re wrong. There’s a specific order to things. We don’t always like how things turn out, but they turn out that way for a reason. You were going out to find yourself, but maybe your self was here all along.”
“Whatever.”
“I’m still not sure I understand your hesitation to get involved with Marsha, though.”
“The first time I left, Marsha got so depressed that she dropped out of college and tried to kill herself. That’s my fault, you know? I don’t want to let her in, because I’m gonna leave again and I don’t want to put her through that once more.”
“I see. That’s a heavy burden for a young man like yourself.”
“You’re telling me.”
Levi fell silent and cocked his head,
as if listening. “You hear something?” Donny whispered after a moment.
“No, I was just making sure the coast was clear, and it is. Let’s go inside.”
“I reckon the door is locked. Brinkley Springs may be a small town, but folks still tend to lock their doors when they leave.”
“That’s okay. I have a key.”
“Myrtle gave you her keys?”
Levi shook his head. Then he grasped the doorknob with his right hand and closed his eyes. As Donny watched, he took a deep breath, held it for ten seconds or so, and then exhaled. Levi opened his eyes as the latch clicked. He turned the knob and the door swung open.
“How the hell did you do that?”
Levi winked. “How do you think? Come on.”
They went inside, Levi first, with Donny following close behind him. Myrtle’s house was a dusty, spider webbed monument to clutter. Every inch of available shelf space or tabletop was piled high with a bewildering array of items—stacks of magazines and paperback books, vials of scented oil, votive candles, potpourri, incense burners, crystals, beads, pewter fantasy figurines, tarot cards, ceramic unicorns and dolphins, assorted knickknacks and more. One bookshelf was stuffed with Myrtle’s self-published books, and next to the shelf were six open cardboard boxes filled with more. A large angel figurine perched precariously atop the television. Donny didn’t like it. Rather than being comforting, the angel seemed somehow sinister, as if it were watching them reproachfully. The air in the house was thick with the competing smells of various incense that made him half-nauseous.
“Crap,” he muttered.
“Yes,” Levi said, eyeing a shard of quartz that was lying on the coffee table. “A lot of it is. Most of it, in fact. But hopefully she has a few things here that are worthwhile.”
“So what are we looking for, anyway?”
“Two things. Why don’t you go into the kitchen and find us some salt. Doesn’t matter what kind. Table salt. Sea salt. Iodized salt. They’re all fine. Get all the salt she has—as much as you can carry.”
“Salt?” If not for the seriousness of their situation, Donny might have thought that Levi was fucking with him. “What do we need salt for?”
“It’s a weapon. You heard what Randy said. The thing that killed his parents had an aversion to salt.
Many supernatural entities do, at least when they’re in corporeal form. Salt is always a good magical failsafe.”
“And here I just thought it made food taste better.”
“It does that, too. Now, go on. I’ll poke around in here and see if I can’t find us some sage.”
“Sage?”
“Yes. I have a small quantity with me, here in my vest pocket. But we’ll need a lot more.”
“Personally, I’d be more comfortable with an M16.”
“But we already know such a weapon would be useless against our foe. Salt and sage are what we need.”
“If you say so.”
Levi nodded, his attention focused on the clutter. Shaking his head, Donny went into the kitchen and poked around in the dark. He found a salt shaker on the table and slipped it into his pocket. Then he opened the pantry door and found a large canister of salt on the top shelf. When he returned to the living room, Levi wasn’t there.
“Levi?”
“I’m upstairs,” he called. His voice was faint. “I’ll be down in a second.”
Donny waited. He sat the salt canister down on the table and flipped through a towering stack of magazines that leaned against the wall in one corner of the room. The titles were ones he’d never heard of before—Fate, the Fortean Times, Angels, the Coming Changes, Conscious Creation, Lightworker Monthly and others. Levi bustled around above him. Donny heard footsteps creak across the ceiling, followed by the sound of a drawer opening. He picked up an issue of the Fortean Times and flipped through it. There was a lengthy feature article about mermaids, including a report of a supposed mermaid sighting off the coast of Haifa, Israel the previous year. Most of the other articles seemed to be culled or clipped from various newspapers and magazines from around the world. All of them focused on the odd or paranormal— ghosts in London’s Highgate Cemetery, a man in Beijing falling seventeen stories and living, sightings of everything from Bigfoot to panthers in Manhattan, a rain of fish in a small French town, a Vietnamese man who had grown horns from his head and more. Each story was stranger than the previous, and all of them were supposedly true. Although Donny had never heard of the magazine, he certainly recognized some of the credited sources for the reports— the Associated Press, the Times of London, the Washington Post and others.
Donny suddenly felt lightheaded. The room began to spin. His pulse throbbed in his ears. He took a deep breath and steadied himself. It was all so bizarre. Most of the time, he felt like a young old man. He’d seen things—done things—that the rest of his former friends in Brinkley Springs would never do or understand, but even after seeing as much of the world as he had, he was faced now with the realization that he knew nothing and had seen nothing. There was an entire other world that existed in the shadows of the real world, a world populated by people like Levi and creatures like the ones outside. Skimming the articles in the magazine had just made the realization more concrete.
“Jesus Christ,” he whispered, breathless. “Jesus fucking Christ . . .”
He heard footsteps on the stairs. Donny composed himself. Seconds later, Levi appeared, carrying a small bundle of what looked like dried-up hay. He waved it as he approached.
“I found some. I just knew she’d have some on hand. Even an amateur knows about the properties of sage. Now we’re ready.” His gaze darted down to the magazine still in Donny’s hands. “Oh, the Fortean Times. That’s one of my favorite magazines.”
“Really?”
“Oh, yes. I read it every month.”
“I should have figured you would.”
Levi feigned offense. “I’ll have you know that I also read everything from National Geographic to Soldier of Fortune.”
“How about Penthouse?”
“Only for the articles.” Grinning, Levi pointed to the magazine in Donny’s hand. “That’s an old issue. If I remember correctly, there’s an interesting article about Namibian bloodsuckers in it. Very thought provoking, since the classic chupacabra legends originated in South America.”
“I don’t know about that.” Donny’s mouth felt like it had been stuffed with cotton. “I didn’t read anything about bloodsuckers. I saw a big piece on mermaids.”
“Ah, mermaids.” Levi nodded. “Leviathan’s handmaidens. Beautiful and utterly evil. They’re vampiric, as well, though not in a sense that you’d probably understand. Nasty creatures, to be sure, but not nearly as bad as what we’re facing tonight.”
“Are . . . are the crows vampires?”
Levi frowned. “No, I don’t believe so. They’ve given no indication of such. Something similar to vampires, perhaps, given that they seem to feed on the souls of living things, but I’m not sure yet.”
Donny didn’t respond. With one trembling hand, he put the magazine back on top of the pile.
“What’s wrong?” Levi asked. “You’re sweating.”
“Levi . . . how long have you been involved in this?”
“In what?”
“This.” Donny made a sweeping gesture with his hand. “All of this fucked-up occult stuff.”
Levi lowered his head and stared at the floor. When he looked up again, his voice was softer and his air of self-assuredness was gone. He looked and sounded tired.
“All of my life. I was born into this. My father, Amos, practiced powwow, as did his father before him.”
“So, your dad taught you how to do these things?” Levi shrugged. “Some of them. He certainly taught me powwow, but his lessons—and tolerance— stopped there. He didn’t approve of the other methods I learned. He didn’t see that they were essential for battling the very things we were supposed to be taking a stand against.”
; “He wanted you to grow up to be just like him.”
“In a sense. Although, to be honest, I think my father would have been happiest had I grown up to be just another farmer like my brother. I couldn’t, of course. Magic would have found me whether I’d been taught or not. The same can be said of Marsha’s brother.”
“Randy? Is that why you were acting so weird about him? But Randy’s not magic. Trust me, I’ve known that kid since he was little. He’s just a yo-boy. There’s nothing magic about him, unless you count how he can keep his pants from falling all the way down when he walks.”
“I’m not sure what a yo-boy is,” Levi said, “but trust me when I tell you that Randy has the gift. He was born with the abilities. They’ve just never been awoken in him. Probably because there’s been no one in his life who recognized his talent. I would guess that he’s had moments of luck—like tonight, when the vehicles started after he touched them. Little bits of synchronicity such as those are very much part of what we do. The trick is to recognize them when they happen and harness or control them, bending them to your will. Had he been properly taught, he’d be formidable against our foes.”
“Is that what you’re going to do? Train him?”
“No!”
Levi said it so strongly that Donny took a step backward. At first, he was afraid that he’d somehow offended Levi. The older man stood stiffly, his expression serious and grave.
“No,” Levi said again, softer this time. “I’m sorry. That came out sounding harsher than I meant. But no, I won’t teach Randy. I won’t teach anyone.”
“Why not?”
Levi paused. At first, Donny didn’t think he was going to answer the question. He stuffed the sage in his pocket and glanced around the room. Then he looked back up at Donny.
“When I wanted to learn about other disciplines— other workings—my father balked, so I went elsewhere. In my former faith, young people are given a year to explore the outside world and determine if they really want to commit to the Amish way of life. I used my year to learn. I went outside of our community on a pilgrimage of sorts and sought out the training of others. I was young and arrogant and brash, and so certain that I was better than my father or anyone else.”
