by J M Fraser
Brian stopped. He’d been here before, in a dream he now remembered like it had really happened. A dream involving Rebecca, Stoddard…and a phooka. “Hold on, Kara. You’re taking me to Abigail right now? I haven’t figured out how to stop her yet.”
Kara stepped over the fence. “I think you’re supposed to find her on your own. We’re here for something completely different.”
He followed her in, shooting glances over his shoulder. He didn’t see any sorcerers. Or shapeshifting horses. Nothing but ancient graves and snow.
The wind had swept everyone’s footprints away. No wreaths decorated these graves, and the only flowers left for loved ones either were plastic or had withered to dead stems poking out of the drifts.
But Kara led him around a hill near the back and up to a grave decorated with actual live, blooming flowers.
More of the phooka dream? Brian stopped again. He breathed in a gulp of bracing air and let it out in a puff—white fog, not black. So far, the presumed location of Abigail’s stomping ground was proving harmless. He came up alongside Kara and looked down at the grave. Sarah Chance—thanks to Gabriella, Brian knew who she was. He bent to read the inscription.
Here lies my loving wife, resting now in Wis Con Sin. 1676 – 1756.
The epitaph raised nothing but questions. How could this be the grave of Henry Stoddard’s wife? Yes, Sarah Chance had been offered to the sorcerer as a bride in the scene he witnessed with Gabriella. But why would a Salem witch be buried in Wisconsin?
“Want to hear some history, Brian?”
Brian jumped at the sound of Kara’s voice.
She picked one of the roses out of the snow and used its stem to trace a stick figure, then added two others wearing little triangle dresses. “Once upon a time, a witch named Rebecca told another witch named Sarah she’d been visited by a boy from the magical land of Wis Con Sin. I don’t suppose you’d know who that boy was.”
“Are you saying Sarah Chance followed me out here?”
“No, she married a sorcerer and stayed east. But on her dying day, she asked her husband to move her grave if he ever found the enchanting land she’d heard about.”
“Looks like he did.”
“Yeah, in 1830 when settlers started calling their new home Wisconsin. Before that, this region went by the Indian name, Meskousing.”
“How do you know any of this?”
“From Henry. Let’s go someplace warm, and I’ll tell you the punch line.”
* * *
They drove to a diner and found an empty booth by the window.
A perky waitress with a million-dollar smile hurried over and took their orders, coffee for her and hot chocolate for him.
Brian eyed Kara’s laptop, unopened on the table between them. Obviously, she’d brought it in for a reason, but something out the window grabbed her attention. Probably the urge to torture him with a slow-motion act before revealing whatever secrets she decided to share. Kara had always been good at that.
Two could play that game. He waited her out by counting the ceiling tiles, sipping his hot chocolate when it came, watching a waitress behind the counter make a milkshake, and so on. But when Kara still kept her gaze averted after a ten-minute stalling act, he threw in the towel—game, set, and match in her favor. “Okay, I’ll ask. What are you looking at?”
“Those sparkly things.”
“Where?” He glanced out the window and caught a tiny blink of light, as if the sun had reflected against a piece of foil floating in the air. Another one flashed a few feet farther left. “What are they?”
“Portals to the World of Mortal Dreams. They follow witches and sorcerers around like pets.”
“Who needs a portal? We go there in our dreams every night.”
Kara gave her coffee a slow stir. She added a cube of sugar. Stirred some more. Glanced up at him. Shrugged. “Not body and soul, we don’t. Think suspended animation. Rip Van Winkle without the beard…like in Avatar or Prometheus, which I think was the best Alien movie in the series.”
“So we’re talking Rebecca. And she can fit through a pinpoint of light because…”
Kara brought her hands together and then spread them wide apart. “Because it stretches. And because a coven of twenty gave her the power when they sentenced her. Short of a coven that size, she would have needed a sorcerer’s help to do it. Or an angel’s. Know any?”
“Uh-huh. I’ve been batted back and forth by the A team lately.”
“So I hear.” Kara started to open her laptop. Stopped. More torture games. She dribbled cream into her coffee, paused, added a touch more, and then started in again on the sugar cubes…dropping each one into her mug with maddening deliberation. She sipped, frowned, and reached for another.
Brian shot rays out of his eyeballs, but she wouldn’t die. He drummed his fingers on the table.
“Let me enjoy the moment here, Brian.”
“Knock yourself out.” The time had come to try outwaiting her again. He grabbed a menu and studied the thing as if he couldn’t care less about whatever story she planned to tell.
Kara snatched it away. “Never try that on your girlfriend.”
“Why not?”
“She’ll turn you into a toad for ignoring her.”
“Kara, even Rebecca would have booted that laptop by now.”
“Fine.” She turned her computer on and angled it so they could both see the screen. “Back in February, I was channel surfing and got hooked on this cable show about genealogy. So I bought some software and researched our happy family. Did you know you’re the only male in the line for over three hundred years?”
“No, I’m not. There’s Dad and—”
“On Mom’s side.”
“What about Great-Uncle Charlie?”
“He was adopted.”
“And you searched three hundred years back?”
“Legend has it someone of your kind is only born into a matriarchal line every few centuries.”
Brian’s stomach took a little roller-coaster ride. “Get out. And what do you mean my kind?”
The genealogy program opened. Kara fiddled with the menu and brought up a lineage chart so humongous it didn’t fit the screen—row after row of little boxes, each with a name and date, all connected by a maze of lines.
“That whole thing’s our family?” He couldn’t follow it without getting dizzy. “There must be a hundred names.”
“Way more. I uploaded tons of info from journals, diaries, and anything else I could get my hands on.” She clicked one of the boxes, bringing up a black-and-white cameo of a woman. A short bio had been entered beneath.
“You must have spent ages on this, Kara.”
She grinned. “Brad says it keeps me off the streets. I traced our family tree all the way back to the 1600s.”
“Ireland?”
“Yeah, but Salem is the good part.”
The roller coaster in his stomach crested and dived.
Kara pulled up another chart. “I had trouble finding the date of death for Sarah Chance’s husband.”
That took a moment to sink in. “We’re related to Sarah Chance?”
“Not only her. Does the name Henry Stoddard ring a bell?”
Brian almost swallowed his tongue. Why not just hit him over the head with the laptop?
His sister couldn’t have grinned any wider. “Your mouth is hanging open.”
“No kidding.”
“Henry Stoddard married Sarah Chance. They had a daughter who married and had her own children. Those kids married and had more, and so on all the way through the centuries. Everyone in the line was a girl except you.”
“Hold on. Stop the world for a second.”
Bad choice of words. The background clatter in the diner evaporated. Customers sitting on stools at the counter froze into a row of mannequins.
Kara snorted with laughter. “This is a witch’s trick. Didn’t Rebecca ever do it?”
“Yeah, once or twice, but this s
topping the world thing isn’t getting better with age.”
“I didn’t really halt it. I’ve put you into a dream.”
“Swell. Can you spill me out of it?”
The clatter resumed.
A witch’s trick.
“Okay, back to the news flash.” Kara danced her fingers across the keyboard and brought up a copy of a ragged old diary page. “See Henry’s name mentioned in the third paragraph? I found a few vague references in other journals, too, but he kept a low profile and dropped off the grid completely around the time Sarah died.”
“Yeah, but he’s still alive. I’ve met him.”
“Me, too!” Kara’s eyes gleamed with excitement. “Back in July, I came across records about Sarah’s grave being moved here, so I drove up to take some pictures. The roses seemed so out of place in that old graveyard. Just as I bent to touch one, someone came up behind me. Henry sure made me jump.”
“Join the club.” Brian needed another freeze-the-world time-out to process the math. Henry Stoddard equaled great-great-great-great-grandfather? He’d probably missed a dozen greats, judging by the number of years since Salem. “Did he know you were one of his descendants?”
She nodded. “Yeah, but he couldn’t place me. He said I reminded him of a woman named Elizabeth Danahey. When I told him she was our great aunt, his eyes lit up.”
Kara pulled up a picture of herself posing with Stoddard. The sorcerer towered over her, smiling from ear to ear. “We had a nice chat right here in this diner, and when I mentioned your name, he nearly fell out of his chair. That’s when he told me all about Rebecca and the prophecy. He never thought he’d be passing the enlightening rod to his own offspring. See how magical this all is? Everything happening was meant to be, Brian.”
Magical? The sickening image of a hanging victim flashed through Brian’s mind. “Did he tell you the bad part?”
“About Salem? Yeah, Henry feels awful about bringing a phooka to town. But he didn’t know what she was!”
So Henry Stoddard was one of the good guys. Rebecca had said as much, too. Brian needed to reboot his mind, but the program just didn’t want to compute.
“Don’t look so creeped out, Brian. He’s been helping you and Rebecca all along.”
“Yeah? How?”
“Where do I start?” Kara took a sip of coffee. Stared out the window. Let out a sigh. “He gave me the crystal ball, for one thing, and he set up a billboard outside Sidney much earlier. Do you remember seeing Rebecca’s image in Mom’s mirror on Thanksgiving? Oh, and did you think your Kia really ran out of gas the day you met her?”
“I thought maybe Rebecca did that.”
“Nope. She tends to rely on faith way too much. Henry’s more practical. But Rebecca doesn’t know anything about his involvement, so don’t tell her.”
Brian tried to think through the past few months and sort out who’d done what. “I’ve been falling backward into Salem lately. Because of Stoddard?”
“I’m sure that’s all Rebecca. Henry is more of a behind-the-scenes kind of guy. He’s been secretly helping her for ages…like the way he leaves books and magazines on her cabin doorstep. He’s afraid the poor girl will lose her grip on reality if her only source of information comes from dreams.”
“I can relate.”
Kara snapped her laptop closed. “Well, that’s the story. Now go beat the bad guys. It’s magic time.”
“Magic?” He still had no idea how to stop the void from swallowing every dream in the universe.
Kara laughed loud enough for heads to turn. “You’re the only boy in a line of descendants started by a sorcerer. Wouldn’t that make you one, too?”
“Not hardly.”
“And don’t hate me, Brian. I see it in your eyes.”
“No, you don’t. Or yeah, maybe a little, but why did you wait until now to—”
“Tell you all of this? Help you more along the way?” She slid out of the booth. “The prophecy is clear that Brian and Rebecca will act on their own to defeat the darkness. I hope Henry and I haven’t helped too much.”
Brian’s stomach flipped.
“Anyway, think about everything I told you from the minute we sat down here.”
“Wait! Talk this through with me.”
She headed for the door. “You’ll figure it out.”
Brian let her walk away. Why chase after her? He’d have more luck turning to the walls in the diner for answers than trying to pry information out of his sister once she’d zipped her lips.
The waitress came by with the check.
He set it aside and tried to analyze everything Kara just told him.
Portals, covens, Sarah Chance, Henry Stoddard. What else?
Sparklers?
He’d seen the little things before. The day he met Rebecca, his car had stalled. He’d thought the effort of pushing the Kia uphill had made him see stars. Much later, when Sharon cracked Rebecca’s book open while sitting outside the condo with him, a spark shot out of it. Maybe something other than static electricity zapped her. And other times…
What if portals had been following him around for months, just waiting for him to use them as passages into the dream world?
And here was a thought—he shouldn’t bother looking for the phooka in a waking location. If Abigail was working with the void to destroy the World of Mortal Dreams, she’d be right there on site, urging the black fog to eat more cabins.
“Yes!” Every head in the diner probably turned, but what did he care? Sorcerer or not—and he sure didn’t feel like one—he’d finally put the last piece of a supernatural jigsaw puzzle into place.
Time to beat the bad guys.
Or die trying.
Chapter 46
Two sparkles of light darted from the porch of April’s condo, hid behind a snowdrift, then shot up to the highest branches of a nearby tree. Brian gasped. How many times had he seen these little things and mistaken them for something else? Stars, fireflies, tiny windblown shavings of metal, and who knew what? But never portals.
The flickers leapt to a snow-covered bush, where he lost them for a moment. Then they blinked again, racing away.
He hurried off the stairs, down the block, around a corner and…grabbed one.
The sidewalk spun. He lost his balance, fell back—
Darkness.
Then light.
And summer warmth.
The scent of fresh grass wafting in a puffy breeze.
Brian stood in the middle of a broad, peaceful meadow.
But he didn’t come looking for peace. The void lurked in this realm. So did Abigail, for sure. Maybe not here, but…
How to get from point A to point B in the World of Mortal Dreams? Wish upon a star? Click those ruby slippers?
Or just order off the menu? “Abigail!”
A roar louder than a freight train made him jump. The black void, miles wide, churned counterclockwise, devouring its prey like a Texas tornado. Bushes. Trees. A cabin.
Brian gritted his teeth and started forward. “Show yourself, Abigail!”
Rebecca’s gentle touch came down on his shoulder. “You can’t do this alone. We’re supposed to be hand in hand.”
Brian turned to the most awesome girl he’d ever known—beautiful, magical.
She wore the same long, faded dress as when he’d first met her. She brushed a lock of red hair out of her eyes. But she stared at him with steely resolve. “We have to follow the prophecy, Brian.”
“Yeah. I know.” He took her hand in his, and that simple contact eased the pounding in his ears.
The black void brightened. Shrank. Stalled. It hovered a few feet off the ground.
He chanced a step forward.
The void retreated.
“It’s afraid of us,” he said. “We can beat this thing.”
“Not really.” Abigail’s voice sent a cold shiver down his spine. She appeared in front of them. First as a horse—a white filly, majestic and proud, until its eyes
turned red—then a girl with arms crossed. The girl on the side of a highway in Wyoming whose angry words—not with the likes of you—rang in his ears once again.
Behind the phooka, the void widened and spun fast, ready to devour…
Everything.
A bolt of lightning shot out of it toward Rebecca. He stepped in front of her.
Wham! The bolt sent him flying into her. They both tumbled in the grass, side by side, like gymnasts in rewind mode. After a series of bone-jarring bounces, he ended on his back, gasping for breath. Rebecca’s own harsh rasps energized him to scramble up, despite the pain in his neck and shoulders, even though he’d hit his head hard enough to see stars, and not the portal kind.
Nothing and nobody was going to hurt Rebecca. Not on his watch.
He lunged forward.
Wham! Another bolt shot him into the air. “Oomph.” He landed a good twenty feet behind Rebecca. If there was ever a time to draw on whatever power a sorcerer’s blood in his veins provided, the time had come. But how? Brian closed his eyes. He ignored the burning pain in his right shoulder, where he’d landed. Held his breath. Tried to focus.
“So you think you’re a sorcerer?” Abigail looked down at him, leering with the meanest eyes he’d ever seen. “Even if you could summon some feeble illusion, how would you stop this?” She raised her arms.
The darkness behind her expanded a hundred times larger, stretching so high it blotted out the sun, turning the daytime into a dusky shadow.
Abigail grew to a terrible height—ten feet. Fifteen. Twenty. A scraggily-haired, mean-eyed monster.
Rebecca crawled toward him. Her forehead bled. Her dress was torn. Brian’s heart caught in his throat.
Abigail cackled. “Go ahead, witch. Try to help this ridiculous boy somehow.” She stepped aside.
Brian rose onto shaky legs.
A gust of wind knocked him back down.
He crawled.
“Brian.” Rebecca’s voice was weak but her eyes remained strong. She stretched an arm to him. “Remember the words of the prophecy. Hand in hand.” She opened hers, revealing the enlightening rod. “Henry thought you’d need this.”
He reached up and closed his own hand into a fist around hers.
This simple ribbon, as she once called it, tingled his palm, and he remembered one of his dad’s favorite sayings. Pride cometh before the fall.
