by Anton Strout
“Will it work for your purposes?” I asked. “Has it given you any deeper meaning into the magic of Spellmasonry or living stone?”
“Fascinating stuff,” he said, nodding over and over to the point he reminded me of a bobblehead. “I’ve never seen stone quite like it. It’s both a natural element and yet . . . not.”
I wasn’t quite sure what he meant, but before I could ask he patted me on the shoulder.
“I’ll get you to your cemetery,” he said. “Fear not.” He turned to go, then spun back around to us. “Oh, I almost forgot.” He reached into the brown hippie satchel he wore slung over one shoulder and pulled out several bundles of leaves wrapped in twine, handing one to each of us. “After studying the stone creature you brought me, I discovered that the spirits within are not wholly bonded with the stone. It would appear that while the stonework of your great-great-grandfather can be a vessel for the spirit, they are always tied back to their original bodies.”
I held up my bundle, the smell of it somewhat familiar but not one I could readily place.
“Sage,” Caleb said when he saw me sniffing at it.
“So what are we supposed to do?” I asked. “Season him to death? I hope you brought the parsley, rosemary, and thyme to finish the Butcher off.”
“You want us to smudge him?” Caleb asked.
Fletcher nodded.
“Smudge?” I asked.
“We light these,” Caleb said. “To purify the remains of the Butcher.”
“What good will that do?”
“It’s the only way to be sure that his body is properly disposed of,” Fletcher said. “It’s part of why his restless spirit was still able to linger here in the mortal realm. We destroy his body, and his ties to this world are severed. When we find his remains, we burn them. If I can find the cemetery, that is.”
Without another word, Fletcher spun back around and dashed up the path ahead with a speed and agility I wouldn’t have expected from so hippie-ish a figure.
Caleb and I continued down the path in pursuit of him. I glanced over to see whether Caleb was feeling my vibe, but by the passive look on his face he seemed completely oblivious.
“You sure this is a good idea?” I asked. “Trusting this . . . forest spirit or whatever he is.”
Caleb thought about it for a good ten seconds, then shrugged. “Pretty sure.”
“Only pretty sure?” I asked, a sense of dread filling me. “Great.”
Caleb stopped while Fletcher scampered off farther ahead.
“Listen,” he said, sounding a bit put out by my questions. “I don’t know what to tell you, Lexi. I’m working my connections as hard as I can. Fletcher is who I’ve got for this.”
“Tell me we’re going to be fine,” I said. Nights of dealing with gargoyles, cops, and witches and warlocks who wanted me dead had me craving reassurance.
“Oh,” he said. “So you want me to lie?”
“No, but . . .” I stopped myself. Truthfully, I didn’t know what was going to make me feel better.
“I can’t say that, Alexandra,” Caleb said. “I don’t know if it’s going to be fine. Nothing in life is certain, especially in the matters we deal in. What I can tell you is that Fletch is good people. He’s always helped me out . . . He grows a lot of things out here in his woods that are near impossible to get.”
“Oh, I can imagine what he grows, all right. The man looks like he’s been following the Grateful Dead for decades, despite his youthful appearance. And knowing him, he probably knew Jerry Garcia, too.”
“That’s not what I was talking about him growing,” Caleb said, but then he nodded. “Okay, maybe that, too, but Fletch has always come through for me and I trust him.”
“Even all alone out here in the middle of the night?” I shuddered again, unable to control it.
“Now you’re just spooking yourself,” Caleb said. “Come on.” He started off down the path again, but I wasn’t budging just yet. He looked back at me, his eyes full of frustration.
“Hey, Fletch!” he called out at full volume, causing things in the darkness at the sides of the path to scatter off into the trees.
“Yeah, man?” our guide called back after a moment, much farther from us than I imagined he could have gone.
“You’re not planning on killing us out here tonight or something along those lines, are you?”
The forest fell silent for a long, drawn-out moment, and for a second I imagined the wild-eyed bearded man sneaking up behind me, but then he called back down the path.
“I don’t think so, man.”
“Okay, thanks,” Caleb called back, still looking at me. “Satisfied?”
“No,” I said, although I did relax a bit, “but I suppose it will have to do. I just wish there was more stonework around out here so I could better defend us if I had to.”
“I don’t think that would work on someone like Fletcher,” Caleb said.
“No?”
Caleb shook his head. “Whatever Fletcher is, he’s more powerful than you or I can imagine. We’re in his domain, his grass and leaves and roots . . . I say we tread softly and speak kindly.”
“Such a sensible approach,” I said. “And coming from you even!”
“I’m not just a pretty face,” he said. “And I’ve learned the advantages of being polite, especially when I’m dealing with someone or something I don’t fully understand.”
A moment later we came upon Fletcher once again, this time sitting cross-legged on the ground in the middle of the dirt path.
“Is it break time already?” Caleb asked. “What’s up, buddy?”
Fletcher combed his hands though his bushy mane of hair, then ran them down to his beard, pulling at it.
“I don’t get it, man,” he said. “The path should go through here, but the forest is acting all weird and jumpy. I tried being reasonable with it, but no go. It’s a dead end.”
Caleb stepped past him, examining the end of the trail.
“Come on,” he said after a moment. “We can make our own path.”
He pressed himself in between two clumps of still, leafy branches, forcing his way forward.
Fletcher scrambled to his feet. “Hey, man, I wouldn’t do tha—”
Despite there being no wind, the branches rustled all around Caleb, who gave a shocked cry as they parted farther apart and then seemed to swallow him. He grunted from within the mass of leaves, no doubt struggling to free himself, and I panicked because all I could see of him was his legs.
“Help him!” I cried out.
“Whoa, now,” Fletcher said, with a mix of surprise, wonder, and curiosity all at once. “Take it easy there, old girl.”
In response the bushes and trees rose up higher into the night air as if a giant was waking from its slumber.
“Fletch, what the hell is that?” I called out, backing away from it.
“Hmm,” he said, nodding slowly at the creature as the two of us watched Caleb’s legs kicking like mad from its “mouth.”
“Beats me,” he said after a moment. “It’s not one of mine, man.”
“Well, do something!”
Fletcher stood there, continuing to look the monster over, but made no move against it.
“I’ve got this one,” Caleb’s muffled voice called out from within its body. “If it’s green and leafy, it can burn.”
A warm glow sprung to life within the tangle of branches, the hiss and crackle of flame coming to life. The creature twisted around in reaction to it and before I could worry for Caleb’s safety—despite having known him to be fireproof from our previous adventures together—the creature spat him free. Caleb flew like a shot through the air until he slammed into the ground, rolling past me as I dodged out of his way. A column of smoke trailed after him, and once he came to rest at the base of one of t
he trees, his lungs erupted in a fit of coughing.
I ran to Caleb, helping him up as he regained his composure.
“Told you,” he wheezed, “I . . . had . . . it.”
“Better than what your hippie friend’s been able to do.”
Caleb started to nod, but stopped and pointed past me back over my shoulder.
I spun around in a quick circle to see the roots of the creature pulling free from the ground all along the path, clouds of dirt erupting into the night air. The tangle of bushes, branches, and trunks rose up to its full height, towering at least twenty feet higher than anything around it. It lumbered forward through the dirt cloud, and although dried bits of old leaves still sparked in flares from within, the cloud damped the fire as the creature shambled down the path toward us.
“Hey, Father Nature,” I called out to Fletcher, who simply looked on with fascination at the creature. “You can jump into action at any time, really . . .”
Vines crawled in advance of the creature, snaking down the path toward us, and before Caleb or I could run, they ensnared us. I dropped my bundle of sage, tearing them off me while Caleb fought to pull more and more vials from his jacket in his struggle with the vines. For every one he burned, withered, or slimed away with a concoction, another replaced it.
“Anytime, really,” I repeated, some of the vines getting past my defenses and crawling up my body.
“Fletch!” Caleb called out. “Help her!”
This seemed to shake the hippie out of his fugue state of fascination. In a flash he ran from the side of the path until he was standing right in front of me, looking down at the vines that had a grip on me.
“Hey, buddy,” Fletcher said, laying his hands on the vine that was quickly constricting across my midsection. “It’s all good. We’re friends.”
Despite the soothing tone in his words, the vine continued wrapping itself, snaking up and around my neck.
“Apparently, it didn’t get the memo,” I said before the tendril slid over my mouth and cut me off.
Fletcher and I both latched onto the vine pulling at it, but it would not budge.
“Don’t be like that,” he said, using an even more soothing tone than the last. “Come on, now.”
The breath in my chest grew shallower and shallower, each exhale allowing the vine to tighten further around me. Stars of light danced before my eyes.
“Stay with me, Lex,” Caleb called out from the bushes nearby as his own struggle escalated, his head disappearing completely into it.
I wanted to call out that this certainly wasn’t the way I wanted to go down. If Rory were here with that damned pole arm of hers, she’s be cutting through our leafy attackers with no problem, but no. I had to go and trust Caleb and his damned hippie friend.
“Shh!” Fletcher said, stroking the vine like it was a pet now. “Don’t be like this.”
Jesus. If I had to rely on these two, I’d be unconscious or worse in the next twenty seconds or so. Despite vines covering my face I managed to still speak out one of the family’s old words of power, reaching out with whatever hold I could get on any kind of stone around me. The sensation came back to me in small dots and jags as I willed what I could latch onto toward my one open hand.
The surface of my hand stung as stone after tiny stone collided with it. The surface of most of them was too smooth or the stones themselves too insubstantial to do anything with. One, however, struck the palm of my hand and a warm trickle of blood opened up on me from its impact.
It had cut me. Meaning it had an edge.
I closed my hand around it, making a fist with one end of the stone sticking out of it. I gripped it with such force that the cut across my hand deepened, more blood dripping from it now, but I refused to let go. Instead, I darted my fist up and into the vines, tearing into them with the protruding jag of stone. The alarm of the creature was evidenced by the twitch the rest of the vines gave, but rather than further tightening around me, it lashed away from me.
Fletcher fell back as a whiplike tip of the vine struck him in the face. Startled, his eyes went white and wide, but that did not last long. Even in the moonlight I could see the whites disappear as the blacks of his pupils filled his eyes. A darkness replaced the light, easy nature of the man, an otherworldliness erupting out of him.
“I tried to go easy on you,” he shouted, his voice now a fearful roar of wind in my ears, “but you have chosen destruction over living.”
Other than his eyes, Fletcher did not look any different. The only change was the distinct sensation of power that radiated off of him like a miniature sun.
The creature towered over Fletcher, focusing its branches and vines on snagging him. With one hand he caught vines one after another, and with a preternatural strength twisted the writhing natural tentacles into a mass of knots. After what seemed like a never-ending stream of them, Fletcher tugged the knotted bunch and pulled the creature down onto the path.
Once grounded, the creature looked more like a beaver dam than anything. Still, it struggled and writhed as it tried to break free of Fletcher’s grip, but it was no use. Fletcher advanced on the monster, pulling himself closer as he took up the vines. It reminded me of the world’s craziest game of tug-of-war ever imagined. When he had closed within five feet of the giant mass, Fletcher let go, leapt higher into the air than a human could go, and crashed down into the center of the creature’s mass, disappearing from sight.
A growl drove into my ears from within the creature. At first I thought it might be some kind of stomach, but then I realized to my surprise that it sounded more like it belonged to Fletcher. It rose to a near-deafening pitch as the bushes and limbs shook. The sharp sound of wood cracking was so intense it felt as if the island of Manhattan itself might be splitting in two.
The vines on Caleb and me went slack, reversing their courses down our bodies and back into the creature’s mass. Shifting and twisting, the creature could not hold its shape. The vast trunks that stuck out shrunk one by one into itself, bits of green brush and branches flying off as they came free of it. Glimpses of Fletcher caught my eye through the creature as it diminished in size until it was no more than a pile of dead wood and shredded greenery.
Fletcher strode from the center of the chaos. His hair was wild, his eyes still pitch-black, and his Hulk-like body ripped with muscles that strained for release inside the now-tight T-shirt he wore. The closer he came to us, the more his body seemed to normalize, his hair smoothing as his pupils shrank and his muscles returned to what they were before.
Now that the path was no longer blocked, Caleb held a hand up for me to wait a minute, then took off up the path.
Fletcher leaned forward, winded, and laid both hands on his knees.
“That was . . . impressive,” I said, reaching down to reclaim the sage I had dropped earlier.
Fletcher’s face was full of distaste. “I wish that this would not come down to that,” he said between breaths. “This abomination rising like that, the fear that grew such a creature . . . Something must have spooked these woods to have it act so.”
“The path looks clear up ahead,” Caleb said, coming back to us.
“Let us proceed, then,” Fletcher said, not quite sounding like himself, as if a darkness still held sway over him. “And the wicked that dares turn my own forest against me had better be prepared to answer for its perversion.”
The three of us went along the now-open path, Caleb and I having to hurry just to keep up with Fletcher as he scampered ahead. The path twisted and turned several times as we wound our way forward before rising up to the crest of a short hill.
The trees parted as the path opened up onto a grand clearing, one much larger than I imagined. Short, rolling hills were dotted with grave markers—tombstones, statues in mourning, mausoleums—and I was surprised by the sheer number of them. There were hundreds.
&n
bsp; “Whoa,” I said. “This place is huge. How has no one ever stumbled upon it before? It must take up half of Central Park.”
“I doubt this place would show up on Google Maps,” Caleb said. “I’m not sure we’re really even in the city right now. Look.”
Caleb pointed far off in the distance just above the line of trees, and while I could make out hints of the Manhattan skyline, it both was and wasn’t there, like a ghost image on a piece of old film that had been double exposed.
“Do I even want to know?” I asked him.
“Freelancing has taught me a few things,” he said. “Don’t eat anything a witch or warlock offers you when you first meet, anyone who says that they can help magically improve your sex life usually means the opposite, and when it comes to the impossibly arcane, it’s best to just roll with it and not stress out about logic too much.”
“That sounds like good advice,” I said, looking away from the existent/nonexistent skyline. “My brain was starting to hurt.”
“Come,” Fletcher said, pointing to the uppermost peak out in the middle of the cemetery. He started for it, going up and over hill after hill, and the two of us followed.
“The Butcher is kept in a place of honor?” I asked.
Fletcher shook his head. “No,” he said. “That is not a place of honor. It is a reminder to all who visit here.”
“A reminder of what?”
“To not become a megalomaniac hedonistic warlock,” Caleb said. “Am I right?”
Fletcher laughed at that. “You do have a way with words, man,” he said, “but yeah. More or less. I think it helps keep those who crave power in check.”
“Who keeps you in check?” I asked.
Fletcher looked at me, a bit of a stoner smile on his face. “Me? I’m good, man. I’m not looking for power.”
“You are power,” I said.
He burst out laughing. “I am?” he asked, totally oblivious. “Whatever you say, lady.”
I looked to Caleb, but he shook his head, indicating it might be best if I stopped asking such ridiculous questions of a creature I didn’t know all that well. We walked on in silence, following him for several more minutes.
