Worlds Away and Worlds Aweird

by James Hartley

  Pria looked at him and said, “Nothing else we could have said? Was our case, then, prejudged before we even got a chance to speak in our defense?”

  “Of course. I do not leave such things to chance. Once captured, you were as good as dead.”

  “But, Your Worship,” Pria said, pronouncing the title with a trace of scorn, “aren’t you surprised that I didn’t die the instant I stepped into the Courtyard?”

  “Not really. The ways of the Gods are mysterious. Perhaps you will die at the stroke of midnight, perhaps just before the first light of dawn. But the Gods will punish you. Now leave me, I must attend to my prayers.” He turned and walked to an altar set in a tiny grove of bushes.

  The night passed slowly. As it got darker, it got colder. Pria was glad she had her clothes. Even with them it was chilly, and she had to move about to stay warm. She watched Archo praying at the altar. He didn’t seem to notice the cold, but when she moved closer she could see him shivering. She moved away and continued walking around.

  She didn’t have a watch, so she had no real idea of how much time had passed. But after a while, she saw that Archo had abandoned the altar and was moving around as she was. He had his arms wrapped tightly around his chest. She was cold, but it was tolerable. She wondered how Archo felt, then decided with a little shiver that she didn’t really want to know. She kept walking.

  The sky was beginning to lighten just a bit when she realized she hadn’t seen Archo for quite a while. Had he decided to cheat and gone inside? She started searching. Finally she found him curled up underneath some bushes. In the dim light, she couldn’t tell if he was breathing or not. She decided to stay near him, just to keep an eye out, so she confined her walking to a small circle.

  The sky continued to lighten, and finally the bell in the Temple tower announced dawn. The gate, the one Archo had used, opened, and the Council of Templars entered, led by Bandor, the Second. He looked around, then spotted her and walked over.

  “So,” he said, “you are still alive. And what of Archo, I don’t see him?”

  Pria pointed at the still form under the bush and said, “There he is. I don’t know if he’s still alive.”

  Bandor went over to the still figure and felt at the wrist, then the throat. He shook his head, and turned to one of the Council. “Archo is dead. Go prepare a state funeral.”

  The Templar nodded and headed back to the gate.

  Bandor turned to Pria. “Since Archo is dead and you are alive, it would appear that the Gods have decided in your favor. As new Chief Templar, I hereby decree that all charges against your friends will be dropped. They will be released and returned to their places in society.”

  Pria bowed and said, “Thank you, Your Worship,” this time using the title as if she meant it. “I am free to go also?”

  “Yes, but just one more thing. A message for you to take to your friends.” He paused, shivering in the early dawn chill. “Will you start producing clothes for us, and for all the people, as quickly as you can? It’s too damn cold out here!”

  Avenge Me!

  [No good deed goes unpunished]

  “JEREMY, THIS HOUSE FEELS EVIL. I don’t like it. Let’s go look somewhere else!”

  “C’mon, Beth, that’s the whole point. There’s no such thing as ‘evil,’ it’s just creepy. Nobody else likes it, the price is real low. We buy it, you’re a witch, you exorcise it or whatever it is you do. Get it cleaned up and we keep it to live in, or even better we sell it for a big killing!”

  “How many times have I told you, witches don’t do exorcisms? Priests do exorcisms—although I’ve never met a priest who has actually done one.”

  “Well, hey, don’t do an exorcism, then, just cast a spell. Do one of them things where you dance around naked in the moonlight, get your girlfriends—pardon me, your ‘coven’—to join you. Especially that red-headed witch, what’s her name, sorta like in the movie.”

  “Jeremy, you’re hopeless. First, her name is Glenda, not Glinda, and second, we only perform those rites in celebration of sacred days like the equinox or the solstice. We don’t do them to get rid of bad spirits. Or bad karma, or bad feng shui, or whatever this house has.”

  “Beth, what’s the point of you being a witch if you can’t do things to help us out? I mean, if I had married you and then found out you were a plumber, wouldn’t I expect you to fix a leaky pipe?”

  It was at times like this that Beth despaired. A plumber! Her friends, her coven, had all warned her about Jeremy. “If you can’t marry a witch,” they had said, “at least marry a man who knows about Wicca and is sympathetic with it.” But male witches were scarce, and Beth was in love, and when all her hints about Wicca slid by Jeremy without evoking the faintest response, she just shrugged it off. Jeremy had been so pleasant, so courteous, so considerate. He had even made the magnanimous gesture of letting her keep her name.

  After the wedding everything changed. He moved into her studio apartment and took over. She soon discovered he was out of work more often than not, and felt quite free to spend what little money she earned. Letting her keep her own name turned out to be just a way for him to use her good credit rating; his was nonexistent. And there were vague hints that the name he was using wasn’t really his.

  After almost a year of marriage, she was sick of it and began to talk about splitting up. “I want a divorce, Jeremy. Or are we even legally married at all, if you did it under a phony name?”

  She was brought up short when Jeremy showed her the photos and videos he had taken of one of their Wiccan rites, dancing naked under the midnight full moon in the town’s public park.

  “I know the DA,” he said, “and he’s also a Deacon in one of those Fundy churches. He’d love to go after a case of public indecency. You don’t want that, do you?”

  There was nothing she could say.

  Jeremy was talking, yanking her attention back to the house they were looking at, the creepy house. “All we gotta do, Beth, is buy this place real cheap and live here two years. Then we sell it for a bundle and there’s no taxes on the money.” He took her hand and started pulling her over to the cellar stairs. “C’mon, we still gotta check out the basement.”

  Beth didn’t want to go. The bad feelings were stronger in this direction, but Jeremy kept tugging at her.

  Most of the cellar had a dirt floor. There was a cement floor only in a small area around the furnace and the water heater. In the far corner, the floor looked like it had been dug up at one time, a rectangle the size of a grave.

  “Jeremy,” she asked, “what’s that on the floor over there?”

  “Hunh? What on the floor where?”

  “That place that looks like it’s been dug up. Over in the corner.”

  “Beth, sometimes I think you’re losing it. The floor over there looks just like the rest of the floor. I don’t know what you’re talking about!”

  Beth went over to the corner, to the grave. It was clearly visible to her, but apparently Jeremy couldn’t see it. The closer she got to it, the stronger the bad feelings got. Then, as she stood over it, she heard a whisper, “Avenge me, avenge my death!”

  Beth looked over at Jeremy, but he showed no sign of having heard the voice. No surprise there! A grave, and a voice from the grave, that only a witch could see or hear. She shuddered.

  Jeremy interrupted her thoughts. “This place looks pretty good. We’re gonna buy this place.”

  She found out a little later that he meant that she was going to buy the house—her name on the deed, her credit getting the mortgage, and her savings wiped out by the down payment. But after that it was his house.

  Beth continued to be fascinated by the grave in the cellar—she was convinced that it was indeed a grave. She would bring her tools down the cellar and cast spells over it whenever she had a chance. She showed it to Glenda and Nancy and some of the others in the coven, and while they could see the outline on the floor, none of them could hear the voice whispering “Avenge me!
”

  For a long time she made no progress, but then Jeremy said he was going out of town for a week on business. Knowing how little he was employed, she suspected it was more likely to meet another woman, but by now she no longer cared. She decided to use the time alone to try a vision quest. When everything was ready, she sat by the grave and drank the vision tea. Darkness engulfed her.

  When she awoke, the cellar looked somehow different, everything glowing with an internal light. A figure stood there facing away from her, then it turned and she saw it was her husband.

  “Jeremy!” she shrieked.

  “I am not Jeremy,” the figure said, “I am your spirit guide for your quest. I take Jeremy’s appearance because he is pivotal to what you seek. In the end, all your choices come down to Jeremy.”

  “Can you tell me, guide,” asked Beth, “who it is that asks to be avenged, and why? And is it my path to avenge them?”

  “It may be your path,” said the guide, “but it is a dark path, one you must be sure you are willing to pay the price to take. A great evil was done here long ago, a good man was offered up as a human sacrifice by one of blackest heart. Look!”

  Now she could see a man chained to a crude altar. A second man stood over him with a dagger, took his life, mutilated the corpse, then buried the body in the very grave before her.

  As the scene faded, the spirit said, “To avenge this requires no less than another human sacrifice, but this one, the sacrifice of an evil victim by one of good and pure heart. Thus can the balance of nature be restored. But human sacrifice of any sort, even to achieve good, is a black art and will leave its mark on the practitioner. That is the price. The choice is yours.”

  “Who would I have to sacrifice?” asked Beth. Then suddenly the realization hit her. “Oh! The form that you, my spirit guide, have taken…?”

  The spirit nodded, then everything went black again. When she came to, she was alone in the cellar, the vision tea cold over the dead fire’s ashes.

  By the time Jeremy came home several days later, she was ready and had only to wait for the night of the full moon. That evening, when Jeremy asked her to fix him a drink, she laced it with a special potion, one that would leave him paralyzed but awake.

  She wasn’t sure how she could handle getting his body down the stairs, so before the potion had quite time to take effect she lured him down the cellar, telling him there was a problem with the furnace. As it was, when he collapsed on the cellar floor, it was difficult dragging him across the cellar and positioning him on top of the grave. But she managed it somehow.

  Jeremy was aware of what was happening. He tried to yell at her, but the potion affected his vocal cords enough to permit only a whisper. She ignored him and proceeded with the sacrificial rite. He threatened, he pleaded, but to no avail. Finally Beth finished the ritual by gripping the hilt of the athame with both hands and plunging its razor-sharp blade into his heart. He tried to scream but gave only a weak gurgle as his final sound. As he died a dark shadow arose from the grave and enveloped his body. Then shadow, body, and grave all vanished. Beth had been worried about disposing of the body, but there was nothing left.

  The athame had vanished with the body, but Beth put away the rest of her tools, and then went upstairs. Her next priority was to break into Jeremy’s strongbox and destroy all the pictures and videos he had of the coven’s nude celebrations in the town park. She also packed his suitcase with the clothes and things he normally took on a trip and placed it in the trunk of the car for disposal at some far distant spot. Finally, still shaking a bit in reaction, she went to bed.

  For the next few days Beth was a little apprehensive, worrying that she might look out and see the police coming up the front walk. But gradually she calmed down and started to feel better. After all, she told herself, you have avenged a great evil, and gotten out from under the virtual slavery in which Jeremy held you.

  A week later the coven was to meet at Nancy’s house. Beth rang the bell and Nancy opened the door, but instead of the warm friendly greeting Beth usually got, Nancy said, “Come in,” in a voice that dripped icicles. Nancy led her into the room where the rest of the coven waited, but nobody spoke, nobody smiled, nobody moved toward her. Even Nancy left her standing barely into the room and joined the others on the opposite side of the room.

  Finally Glenda, the coven leader, addressed Beth. “We know what you have done. You have practiced the black arts, and the stain on your soul is visible to all. You have become a dark witch.”

  “But,” protested Beth, “I did what I did to redress a great wrong. I did it for a good purpose.”

  “It matters not,” said Glenda. “Black arts are black arts, no matter what the reason. You have violated your oath to the coven to do only good, and we have unanimously voted to expel you. Oathbreaker, you are no longer one of us. Begone!” All of the witches turned around, their backs to Beth, and she was left to find her way out.

  As she headed home, the words of her spirit guide came back to her: “You must be sure you are willing to pay the price…” Now she knew the price—her coven, all her friends, becoming anathema to all good witches. Would she have chosen this path if she had known where it led? She wasn’t sure, but she knew she was going to have the rest of her life to reflect on it.

  Maybe the afterlife, too…

  Barbecue

  [The neighborhood Fourth of July picnic]

  THE YARD IS LITTERED WITH BODIES, halves of bodies, body parts. I managed to get into the tool shed and lock myself in, and I’ve been looking out through a crack in the wood. My wife managed to avoid death for a while, she was one of the last to be killed, but I just saw her torn apart. I don’t see any humans alive in the yard now. Is that somebody coming toward the tool shed?

  It was no big deal having Glert and Afna Hafanar for next door neighbors. Those were the names they went by, they didn’t even try to get us to use their real Bofanian names, which were about fourteen syllables long. Glert and Afna looked almost human, and they spoke almost perfect English. Better English than a certain family down the block who I won’t name, who seemed to think that we should all learn Spanish to talk to them.

  Glert and I both worked long hours and got home late, so we didn’t see each other much except on weekends. Still, he was a nice guy, friendly, and always willing to help out. One time I was having a lot of trouble with my mower, and he came over. He seemed to have a real good grasp of machinery—which I certainly do not—and was able to get my mower going for me. Having a second thumb on the opposite side of each hand seemed to give him extra dexterity. Felt a little funny shaking hands with him, though.

  My wife Doris was really friendly with Afna. After the two of them got the kids on the school bus, they would get together for coffee or whatever. Oh, they had a few adjustments at first, but nothing big. For instance, Doris likes real cream in her coffee. Not half-and-half, not milk, and certainly not that powdered “creamer” stuff.

  “You like our Earth coffee, don’t you, Afna?”

  “Yes, Doris. It is one of the wonderful surprises, getting to a new planet and finding something this good.”

  Doris went to the fridge and pulled out the container of cream. “Here, try some of this. It makes it even better.”

  Afna picked up the cream container and looked at it, then sniffed at it. Seconds later, she got a horrified look on her face and her normally slightly greenish complexion turned to a bright lime color.

  “Ewwwww! What is this?”

  “It’s just cream. You know, the richest part of milk.”

  Afna had pushed the cream as far across the table as she could, and was sitting there taking long, deliberate breaths. Slowly her face faded back to its normal shade.

  “Milk is the liquid that your cows produce to feed their young, right?”

  Doris had a puzzled look on her face. “Yes, this cream comes from cow milk, that’s the most common. Other animals produce milk, too. Is that a problem?”

 
; “Doris, our people do not eat or drink food products derived from animals. I’m not talking about just Glert and I, I’m talking about all Bofanians. I think your term for it is ‘vegetarian.’”

  “Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t know. But I think the word you want is ‘vegan,’ our vegetarians drink milk and eat other foods made from it, or other foods like…” She paused, noticing Afna starting to get greener again. “Anyway, those who eat no animal foods at all are called vegans. Wait a minute.” She went over to the cabinet and handed Afna a different container. “Non-dairy creamer. That should be okay, and some people say it tastes just as good in coffee.”

  Afna put some in her coffee, tasted it, and nodded. “That is good!”

  Doris managed to get used to non-dairy creamer in her coffee. It was the only choice if she was over at Afna’s. She had a few lunches over there, too. Afna’s meals were heavy on salads, which was fine. Doris ate a lot of salads when she was on a diet kick. One night they invited our family over for dinner. We had salad, some things I think were tofu, other veggie stuff, and fruit for dessert. The kids weren’t thrilled with the food, but I had taken the precaution beforehand of giving them a stern lecture and threats of grounding if they didn’t behave. If you want the truth, I wasn’t thrilled about the food either.

  When we got home, I asked Doris, “How come they don’t at least go for those ‘Bogus Burgers’ you can buy in the frozen section?”

  “Ken, those are made to taste and smell like meat. Probably make them sick even if they are all vegetable products.”

  After that, Doris went out and bought one or two vegan cookbooks so she could invite Glert and Afna over to our house for dinner. The kids and I tolerated it, but I made it clear to Doris that I didn’t expect her to use those cookbooks except when the Hafanars came over.

  The Fourth of July Neighborhood Barbecue had been a tradition for several years, rotating among various back yards, and this year it was my turn. I had a real nice propane grill, and a couple of others would bring theirs over so we would have plenty of cooking capacity. We were going to do burgers, hot dogs, chicken, even ribs. We would have a good supply of beer, the good stuff like Coors or Molson, none of that “lite” junk. Soda for the kids, of course. And Jim down the block was going to make up his specialty, Fishhouse Punch. That stuff is dynamite. You think you’re drinking fruit juice. Then halfway through the second glass, paralysis sets in.