by J M Fraser
Not that Brian would retire into a Clark Kent existence anytime soon. He and Rebecca had Abigail to deal with, didn’t they? Or else the void would devour everyone’s dreams. Didn’t Rebecca warn as much the night of Club Intrigue? He’d seen Abigail interacting with a black fog earlier that night. It didn’t take a Mensa to put two and two together and—
“I also request the cat’s cradle,” Rebecca said.
Gasps and murmurs rose from the group.
“What’s that?” he said.
Gabriella shook her head. “I never should have tinkered with events in Salem. Now you’re both bent on a questionable mission at best. But win or lose, she’s lost to you.”
He leapt from the log. Glared down at her. “What are you talking about?”
She took a deep breath. Sighed. “The cat’s cradle allows a convicted witch to stray from exile if she’s willing to hang herself each time. But only nine trips are allowed. After the last one, you’ll never see her again.”
White mist swept out of the trees, curling in smoky waves until it reached the witches and billowed into a cloud. They disappeared behind it.
A flash of light blinded him. He shut his eyes, reopened them, and gaped out his windshield. The penguin gazed down on him from the motel sign above.
Vacancy, with a burned-out letter C.
Chapter 41
Rebecca sat at the mushroom table in the corner of the Gallery of Secrets, researching the lore of the Sisterhood once again. She paused in the middle of a thick book to run her fingertips across a sketch of an angel with clipped wings.
The reading candle on her table flickered, and a shadow stained the page. She cringed. Although she’d asked the goblin caretakers to let her have privacy, they’d allowed someone to creep up on her from behind.
“Rebecca, do you remember the night you cast a sleeping spell on two girls and sent the moon dancing into a pentacle?”
Gabriella. Of course. The goblins wouldn’t have the power to stop her. Rebecca refused to look up from the book, let alone leave her stool to kneel before a most unholy angel.
“Were you aware sightings were reported as far away as merchant ships at sea?” Gabriella said.
“I have a gift for illusion.”
The creature peered over her shoulder. “What are you researching here?”
“Fallen angels.”
Gabriella drew in her breath. “Figured me out, did you?”
“Henry Stoddard did.”
Silence. Only the murmurs of other visitors at the far end of the gallery and the steady tick of a pendulum clock cut into the perfect quiet. Perhaps Gabriella had left.
Rebecca took a deep breath. The bothersome creature was dangerous and not to be trifled with. Best if she had gone away.
“I didn’t.” Gabriella stepped around the table, flashing the smug smile of a triumphant little girl. Only her timeless, brooding eyes gave her away as a menace, not an innocent child.
Rebecca didn’t flinch. This creature’s unsettling gaze held nothing to fear anymore. “According to this book, you fallen ones have been stripped of your powers. Do you even have substance?”
“My words are substance enough.”
Yes, they were. Their magnitude took Rebecca’s breath away. “You’ve taught Abigail how to harness her powers, haven’t you? She’ll grow the void until it swallows every dream. How will people survive without the World of Mortal Dreams to replenish their spirits?”
“Maybe mankind would be better behaved with only one dimension to worry about.”
Rebecca sprang off her stool. “Then why did you come to my cabin that day in Salem? You told me where I’d find him, in this century. He and I would never have made a connection otherwise.”
“A mistake,” Gabriella whispered.
“No, it wasn’t. I’ve had visions of how terrible the world would be without our dreams.”
The creature folded her arms. “Visions? I’ve seen bombs. Big ones. I’ve been to Hiroshima. Don’t try to tell me—”
“You’re a menace, Gabriella.” Rebecca headed to the doorway, steeling herself for the five-hundred-three step climb, the struggle across the forbidding badlands beyond, and then…
“You don’t know how to save the world, Rebecca.”
The room swam. Rebecca grabbed a railing to keep from falling. Gabriella was right. Rebecca had no idea how she and Brian could possibly stop the void from swallowing everything.
The fallen angel approached from behind. “He’s looking for you in Nebraska at the moment, not that the boy has any more clue than you do.”
Was Brian in danger? She balled her fists. “Where in Nebraska?”
“Sandy Night Motel in Sidney.”
Chapter 42
The void hovered to the east, fiercely boiling and curling into itself. No sign of Abigail. Gabriella’s phooka never seemed to travel into the past, but Rebecca kept a wary eye out just in case as she walked along the edge of a pond nestled within the rugged hills. A mile later, she reached her old home and found her mum on the doorstep with her knitting.
The sun brought out the red in her mother’s hair. She’d never gone white, not even at the end.
Their eyes met, and her mother frowned. “I asked thee not to torture thyself by coming from the future to visit a ghost, Rebecca. Art thee not inside the cabin at this very moment to keep me company?”
Rebecca froze. What year had she entered, 1720, perhaps? What if her younger self was in the cabin using one of the quarterly allowances the coven queen had granted for visiting her mother? Rebecca dared not defy superstition by looking through the window to catch her own eye, so to speak. She averted her gaze to the doorstep. “I’ve muddled everything.”
Her mother set her knitting aside. “Sit with me for a spell.”
As they sat in silence, a pleasant chorus of birds, crickets, and frogs tried to thin the worries in the air. Rebecca attempted slow, steady breaths to calm herself. “I wasted a hanging to burn marks on the door of a girl who had eyes for Brian. I told him the marks were to ward off the phooka, but that was less than truthful.” She sighed. “And how many journeys did I squander just for the joy of being with him? Only one visit remains, but Brian’s no closer to realizing what I need. He thinks I want to be rescued!”
“And what dost thou need?”
“We’re chasing a prophecy, Mum. I need to bring your dreams back and stop the void from devouring everyone else’s. I need—”
“Love.”
“Love?” Rebecca all but spat out the word. “Love has defeated me.”
Her mother let out one of her long, deep motherly sighs. “No it hasn’t. But perhaps your pride has.”
* * *
Rebecca found Henry puttering in the garden outside his castle. She hid in the shadows and twisted her hands, over and over and over again.
She’d always relied on herself. She’d never asked anyone for assistance. Especially him.
The sorcerer plucked one weed after another out of the soil, tossing each into a growing pile. He picked a rose and placed it in a clay vase, setting it on a workbench.
Then he stopped…and chuckled. “Do you really think you can creep up on me, Rebecca? After all these years, I can sense your approach from a mile away.” He turned to her. “The air sweetens, just a touch.”
Was he greeting her with sarcasm? She’d never been good at reading his hidden meanings. Rebecca shifted from one foot to the other. Sarcasm would come soon enough when she told him why she’d come. Her instinct was to look down, but she squared her shoulders and met him eye to eye. “I’ve come to ask for help.”
All went quiet. The birds stopped singing. The insects no longer buzzed.
Rebecca didn’t waver. She held Henry’s gaze even as he arched his brows and widened his lips to an annoying grin.
“What would your precious code say about this, Rebecca?”
Her mouth went dry. Did he have to bring that up? “Sometimes, Henry, events become la
rger than tradition can handle.”
Chapter 43
The afterimage of Salem witches faded. The piney scent of their forest hideaway staled into the not-so-new aroma of a Kia with plenty of miles. The crackle of torches became the gentle hum of an idling motor.
Brian opened his eyes. He’d parked here in the lot earlier, gone inside the motel lobby, and taken a three-century trip to Salem with Gabriella.
Now what?
A rewind.
He’d go inside again and—
He slumped in his seat. Why get hit on the head twice with the same bad news that for Rebecca this particular page of the calendar was a mere pit stop on a five-hundred-year journey? She had one more visit left before disappearing from his waking life forever.
Unless covens allow parole for good behavior?
Yeah. Uh-huh. The Salem witches didn’t come across as the forgiving type. Parole wouldn’t be a word in their language. Not in Ogham. Not in Shakespearian English.
Except…that whole crew died hundreds of years ago, right?
He sat straighter.
Rebecca’s exile scheme had been brilliant. Confess to a crime and get a ticket to the future. That’s how they met in Nebraska. Now she just needed to shorten her sentence by stepping out of the World of Mortal Dreams and into the waking world for good. Who could stop her? Her original captors would have all died centuries ago. Maybe nobody served as backup.
Brian caught movement out the corner of his eye, inside the motel, over by the check-in counter. Rebecca this time? They needed to have a serious talk.
He hurried out of the car and into the lobby.
The lights were on, but the reception area was empty. Brian peered down the door-lined hallway where Gabriella had led him through the portal to Salem. “Hello?”
Dinnnggggggggggggggggggg… The service bell at the registration counter went off on its own. The tinny sound stretched beyond a normal stopping point, tickling his ears, raising the hair on his arms.
Nnngggggggggggggg…
It wouldn’t stop.
Nnngggggggggggggg…
The bell’s vibration crept down the back of his neck.
NnnggggGGGGGGGGG…
Brian covered his ears. He turned to the parking lot outside, where his car offered refuge from all things creepy.
No. He needed answers, and this place had provided a few already. Could Rebecca get out of her sentence early? If not, could he bust her out? He wouldn’t find out by running away.
“Good.” Somebody’s gravelly voice rose from the check-in counter. “You never struck me as the quitting type.”
Brian swung around.
Henry Stoddard grinned. Dressed in ordinary street clothes, this sorcerer, this author of cat riddles, this fellow time traveler—or incredibly old man—winked at him, as if meeting in the middle of time/space nowhere was the most natural thing in the world. He held up a folded piece of paper. “She left this for you.”
Brian snatched the note and opened it.
Brian,
You need to go home. I will NOT step one foot into my cabin with Gabriella lurking so close. Christmas Eve is only a few days away. I’ll visit you at your parents’.
Love,
Rebecca
She’d drawn hearts at the bottom and scented the stationary.
Brian couldn’t find much cheer in that promise. Christmas Eve would be Rebecca’s last visit.
Stoddard folded his arms. “I’ve got some advice for you.”
“I’m all ears at this point.”
“Not every damsel in distress needs rescuing, son.”
“Yeah. I figured that one out already.”
“Good. Then you know your real problem is down the hallway.”
Poof. Stoddard was gone.
Or was he? Brian reached across the empty counter, grasped thin air. “What real problem?”
No answer.
He turned to the endless door-lined corridor. “Which one do I go through?”
Silence.
The glowing one. Had to be. Not glowing, exactly. Rays of light seeped in through the cracks between door and frame.
Brian went up to it. Turned the handle. Yanked it open.
Whoosh. A blast of wind shoved him backward and then reversed its flow, sucking him out of the hallway.
Brian flailed in the wind. He spun, tumbled, flipped, and rose, higher and higher. He flew across the Nebraskan prairie from night into day. Gasping for breath, blinking his watery eyes, he tried not to panic, tried to go with the flow, even as the landscape raced beneath him as if he were flying in a rocket ship.
The storm stopped so suddenly it knocked the air out of him. His heart pounded while he hovered high above the ground, a short distance from Rebecca’s cabin.
To his right, sunlight blinded him. To his left, the darkest wave of nothingness he could ever imagine closed in on the cabin. Hills disappeared into its gloom. Birds. A deer. He shuddered.
A girl stood before the billowing darkness.
Abigail.
She pointed to the cabin, and the black fog sped in that direction.
“No!” Brian’s words died in his throat.
The cabin went dark.
The scene dissolved.
Brian stood in the motel lobby. His ears buzzed.
Henry Stoddard grinned from behind the counter again.
Brian tried to speak. Nearly choked. Tried again. “What just happened?”
The sorcerer shook his head. “If you don’t stop Abigail, every dream will be swallowed. We’ll have nothing left. So go home like Rebecca told you and worry about how to win this war.”
Poof.
“Wait! How do I beat Abigail?”
“Son…” The sorcerer’s disembodied voice rose from behind the counter. “I wish I knew.”
“You don’t?”
No answer.
Now what? Brian tried to think of a plan. A set-one-foot-in-front-of-the-other kinda thing. But he didn’t have enough ideas to even lift the first foot.
The guitar riff tone of his cell phone jolted him like a bolt of lightning. He stared at the caller ID—Kara—remembered he had a sister with that name, managed to find a voice. “Hey.”
“Hey yourself, Brian. I need you in Kenosha. Mom and I agree it’s time you knew something.”
“There’s a thought.”
“Let’s meet at Sacred Heart Cemetery tomorrow morning at eleven. This’ll blow your mind.”
Too late. His mind had already crashed like one of those knockoff smartphones they make in third world sweatshops.
Chapter 44
Brian trudged across a snow-covered lot to a warehouse he’d visited once before. The crumbly brick facade wasn’t modernized by a canopied entranceway anymore, or brightened by blinking neon lights announcing Club Intrigue—a rendezvous point he’d been drawn to like a moth to flame, seemingly a dozen lifetimes ago.
This side of the building didn’t even have a door now.
Did that make the entire scene of Rebecca’s onstage poetry recital/hanging a dream?
He shrugged. Rebecca’s ability to create reality out of nothing blurred all lines to the point where one state of existence became indistinguishable from another. Not that it mattered. Dreams and reality were different shades of the same color, just like his mom said back when he was a kid bouncing toy trucks off the lion claws of their dining room table.
Rebecca’s appearance at Club Intrigue had been real. This completely different here and now was real. And the threat to the World of Mortal Dreams?
Real.
He headed around back—the first place he’d seen the black fog and the last where he’d encountered Abigail in the flesh. Not counting a horse in a cemetery dream he now remembered with great clarity. Or, much more recently, the illusion created by Henry Stoddard to deliver a message—Abigail had to be stopped.
Stopped here? Brian didn’t know where else to look.
“Abigail?”
; The wind whistled across a pile of snow-covered tires, beneath a deep, star-studded sky. Fog had blotted out those pinpricks of light the last time he’d been here. A black fog as absent now as the girl/horse/phooka he didn’t have a clue how to find.
Or defeat.
His cell phone vibrated.
He yanked it out of his pocket. Read the text.
Are you home yet, Brian?
Yeah, Kara, he typed. I’ll see you in the morning.
Brian jammed his hands into his pockets. Looking for Abigail here had been worth a shot.
Now what?
Chapter 45
A gust of wind lifted snow from the arch of the Kenosha graveyard’s stone entrance and stung Brian’s face with a thousand icy needles. He turned away from the next blast in time to see his sister drive up.
Kara got out of the car, spread her arms, spun in a circle, curtsied. “See anything different?”
“Yeah.” She’d gone Christmas, shadowing her eyes green instead of black and donning a red ski cap. Normally this would be the time for a joke. Mockery even. But Brian couldn’t get past the mission at hand. “Kara, how much do you know?”
She stared at him for a long moment before breaking into a grin. “I’m your big sister, and a witch to boot. Shouldn’t that mean I know everything, from your perspective?”
He could only hope. “Including how to beat a phooka?”
“From what I’ve learned about Henry, I’m sure you’ve got it in you.” She headed toward the cemetery gates.
Brian wasn’t even sure where to start with the questions. “Henry, as in Stoddard?” He hurried after her.
They followed a shoveled path past mausoleums and well-kept graves until they reached a low-rent district dotted with plain markers bent by time into odd angles. A little fence separated them from an even older section where the gravestones had been weathered almost smooth.
